Jen had finally hung up the call she’d taken almost as soon as they’d gotten in the car, which had prevented Evelyn from getting any more information about why they were going to the Butler Compound. But she’d learned plenty about Jen from her half of that conversation.
“That was your supervisor, huh?”
“Yes,” Jen said. “And before you ask, no, I’m not supposed to be doing this. He thinks I’m running down a lead on another case. Which was probably obvious from that call. He has no idea I tracked you out to the prison.”
Evelyn nodded. “He may not know about me, but he knows what you’re doing.”
“What?” Jen whipped her head toward Evelyn, and the SUV jerked. She corrected quickly on the poorly maintained road. “Why do you say that?”
“I could tell from your call.”
“You could hear him? What do you have, bat ears?” Jen asked. She’d taken the call on her Bluetooth, instead of putting it on speaker.
“No. But that’s what makes me a profiler,” Evelyn replied. “Trust me, Martinez. He knows.”
It had been obvious from the way Martinez had kept repeating answers to the same questions about her location. Detailed questions, as though her boss didn’t believe a word she was saying.
“Shit,” Jen muttered. “He warned me to stay away from this.”
“Want to tell me what I’m getting into here?”
“Okay. So, the compound is pretty isolated, as you can tell. This group is cut from the same cloth as Cartwright.” She glanced over at Evelyn. “Which reminds me, while we’re there, call me Jen. Not Martinez. Just Jen. That’s how they know me.”
Evelyn shot her a disbelieving look. “They know you?”
“Yeah, I’ve been out there a couple of times. Kind of unofficial, doing the rounds, that sort of thing. They come out and meet me, talk for a while. Usually Butler himself, sometimes with a few of his followers.”
“And they bought your reason for visiting?”
“Oh, yeah. Salt Lake City is a big field office, but this area is sparsely populated. People around here are used to law enforcement periodically making goodwill calls.”
Evelyn frowned, but didn’t argue.
“You ever work at an RA?” Jen asked.
Evelyn shook her head. Most agents now started at one of the bigger field offices, but back when Jen had begun her FBI career, they were still sending a lot of newbies to resident agencies, smaller satellite offices.
“Well, I have. Place quite a bit like this actually, out in Nevada. And it was par for the course, law enforcement checking in on everyone now and then.”
Evelyn nodded, still not sure it was a good idea for Jen to be making these visits. On the other hand, direct contact was the best way to get information on a potential problem group.
“Anyhow,” Jen continued, “my last partner and I introduced ourselves as FBI, but with first names only. No reason to tell a bunch of racists that I’m married to a Hispanic man.”
“They’re going to love me,” Evelyn muttered. Her mother was of Irish-English descent, but her father had been Zimbabwean. There was no hiding her heritage.
“Yeah, well, the profiler who showed up being a big, white, Aryan-looking guy was probably too much to hope for. Don’t worry. The most they’ll do is glare at you.”
“That’ll be fun,” Evelyn said, already regretting that she’d agreed to this as she glanced at the dashboard clock. She didn’t really mind the animosity of suspects—that was pretty common—but this visit was sounding more and more like a bad idea.
And if the most she had to fear from them was the evil eye, what kind of threat were they?
“The leader, Ward Butler, was friends with Lee Cartwright when they were kids,” Jen explained as she sped along the barely paved roads.
Evelyn stared at her. “You know Cartwright’s claiming he’s got a copycat, right?”
“Yeah, I heard. I wouldn’t take anything that guy says at face value, though. He’s not exactly the type who’d warn the government. He’s more likely to watch the news from prison and cheer when it happens. Or taunt law enforcement, acting like he knows who’s copying him, just to get a rise out of us.”
“Okay,” Evelyn said. “I can see that. But if Butler and Cartwright are friends...”
“Were friends,” Jen corrected her. “Like twenty years ago. They grew up together, but there’s no indication they’ve been in contact in a long time. Then they had a complete falling-out when Cartwright went violent, and Butler started his compound.”
“So you’re saying Butler’s group isn’t violent,” Evelyn said, getting frustrated. “Why are they a threat?”
“They haven’t been violent yet,” Jen replied. “But I think they’re going to be.”
“Why? And how long have they been nonviolent?”
Jen slowed the SUV and turned off onto a dirt path. “Just because they’ve been quiet for a few years doesn’t mean they plan to stay that way. Butler refers to the place as a ‘refuge’ for other survivalists. And we have a lot of those—people who want to live off the land, with no interference from anyone. Most of them wish they’d been born a couple of centuries ago, with no law except maybe a local sheriff, and the chance to be as isolated as they want.”
“I know about survivalists,” Evelyn said. “And sure, some of them are a problem, but plenty of them just want to be off the grid. Leave them alone and they leave everyone else alone.”
The SUV bounced along the potholed trail, and Jen’s silence dragged on until she said, “You know the Unabomber’s cabin was only about twenty miles from here? His neighbors probably thought he was harmless and just wanted to be left alone.”
Evelyn held in a sigh. “You still haven’t told me why you think this particular group is more dangerous than any of the dozens of other cults we’ve got.”
Jen’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “You’re too young to remember some of the crap from the nineties, but...”
“I know enough.” Evelyn could see where this was going. “And yes, there’s been an uptick in homegrown terrorism chatter over the past few years, but...”
“Officially, the Butler Compound is a low threat,” Jen broke in. “The FBI thinks Butler is more likely to feed his followers Kool-Aid than plan an attack against anyone. But I’ve been around cults. One of my very first assignments was in Waco, Texas.” She gave Evelyn a meaningful look.
“The Koresh disaster? You were there?” David Koresh and his followers had been in a fifty-one-day siege after Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents tried and failed to deliver a warrant. Koresh and his followers had fired on the ATF agents and barricaded themselves in the Apocalypse Ranch—a name that should’ve set off warning bells from the start. The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team had eventually surrounded the place. In the end, Koresh and the cultists had set their own compound on fire, and most of them died.
“Yeah, I was there. Mostly getting senior agents coffee, but trust me, I have experience with cults. I heard the crazy ranting, I saw the few cultists who came out, I saw the place burn. Hell, I even walked through crowds of protesters and had egg thrown at my face. But this compound is different. It’s got some of that same creepy vibe, but I’m telling you, this is more than a simple cult. There’s just something off about the place. I know there’s more happening. And I’m not going to be the FBI agent who overlooks it.”
No