Chapter 8: Kernel

My mother called me. At work. First Autumn, now ... Flora Jennings.

“Winter, can you come by?”

Mom knew I worked, had my own office. But since I was no longer with the KCPD, nor employed by a real company, she simply hadn’t accepted that I do anything worthwhile.

In fact, after Reggie left me, and before Vanessa married me, my mother regarded me as ... sad. A loser. Couldn’t keep a man, couldn’t find a real job.

So it didn’t surprise me that she would expect me to drop whatever foolishness I was doing. It was surprising, though, that she wanted my help. It had always been Daddy who calmed her, righted the world for her.

Anyway, I dropped everything, “Sure, Mom, take me about half an hour.”

“Good.”

I left the Stockyards, drove over those fucking freeways, through the Power & Light District, past the Wrigley, through midtown, Westport, the Plaza to Brookside. To the house where I’d grown up. Wrestling with my mother and sister for Daddy’s attention, his affection.

There was a big, black Chrysler in back. The model with the gansta look. I didn’t recognize the car.

I went in through the kitchen, remembering to wipe my feet first. Mom said, “You remember Harvey Simpson, Winter.”

I reached out my hand, “Of course, good to see you.”

Mom took her old-fashioned blue and white speckled coffeepot off the stove and poured a cup for me. The three of us sat at that kitchen table where I’d had thousands of meals. Done my homework, argued with Autumn.

I glanced at Harvey, been a few years. Time hadn’t been particularly kind to him. Receding hairline had kept creeping backwards. Bifocals thicker than I’d remembered. His slump didn’t disguise a growing potbelly.

But he was a nice guy. Husband to one of my mother’s best buddies — LeAnne.

Mom said, “You’re so clever, Winter, everyone says so.”

“Hmm.”

“Harvey and LeAnne ... they’re having a little trouble.”

“Oh?”

Harvey blushed.

Mom said, “It’s silly, Winter, but I thought an outside opinion ... like a ... a...”

Harvey said, “An arbitrator.”

Mom frowned, “It’s not about money, Harv.”

I said, “An outside perspective sometimes helps. Like a consultant. Counselor.”

They nodded.

Okay, what the fuck is going on?

Harvey said, “It’s nothing, not really. But it’s embarrassing.”

“Okay.”

Mom said, “Last week...”

Harvey jumped in, “Tuesday. Tuesday night.”

Okay, they’re going to tag-team this.

“It was late, almost eleven. LeAnne and I were asleep and then...”

Mom said, “A noise. A loud noise.”

“Sort of a bang. And then my car alarm is going off.”

“Waking the whole neighborhood probably.”

I nodded. Brookside. Probably some of the people over 60 had gone to bed by eleven.

Harvey looked away from me, “LeAnne told me to go downstairs. To find out.”

My mother looked away, she was embarrassed for Harvey. She wouldn’t have had to tell Daddy to go downstairs. He’d already have been there, gun in hand.

Harvey said, “It was the strangest thing. Never happened to me before.”

“I see.” Although I didn’t.

“I told LeAnne, we should listen some more. Maybe a raccoon had jumped from the garage roof.”

Mom busied herself with coffee refills.

“LeAnne told me to call 911.”

Mom said, “The phones were downstairs. Charging.”

“I see.”


Harvey stirred in more sugar. “Finally LeAnne gets out of bed. Puts on her robe and slippers. Goes down.”

Mom said, “Tell Winter about you. About ... you.”

Harvey sighed, “It was the strangest sensation. I was exhausted. I felt ... I don’t know, an almost dreamlike inertia. Almost some sort of psychic paralysis.”

“My.”



“I was ... incapacitated. Not just physically. I had like a mental whiteout.”

“I see.”

“Then I heard the refrigerator door open and close. I could move again.”

Mom said, “LeAnne never did say what was out there.”

Probably pissed off.

Harvey said, “It was like I’d had, I don’t know ... a neural stoppage. I felt like a captive.”

I thought, “More like a poltroon.”

I was bored, but ... Mom and LeAnne. I said, “It’s a mild psychic ailment, Harvey. Rare, but not unheard of.” Glibly making it up, “Good news, it’s not chronic. Usually it’s a one-time phenomenon.”

Mom, interested, said, “What’s it called?”

“Oh I forget the medical term. One of those long words, impossible to spell. No one can remember it except first-year med students.”

Mom nodded, “For the test.”

“For the test. Harvey, would you like me to talk with LeAnne? I came across a case of it once. In DC, a decorated FBI agent named Ash Collins. Happened once, worried him of course. But there were no recurrences.”

“Yes! Thank you so much, Winter.”

“I told you she’s clever.”

Red Maplethorpe and his Pittsburgh partner had spent some weeks in Kansas City upgrading the FBI’s computer systems — both software and hardware. I now had easier, faster, deeper, access to almost any criminal database I could imagine. Domestically anyway.

I fell into a research routine. Mornings, I worked my own caseload. Mostly trying to puzzle out the residential burglaries in upscale neighborhoods all around the metro area.

To keep my sanity, to clear my head, I took a long, no-wine lunch break. Then, around three, I ordered my butt to 1300 Summit Street and started digging. Re-digging. I’d work until eight, nine, sometimes later. Long days.

Specifically, I was researching guns and supremacist compounds. I put diamonds aside until it would be time to call that New Jersey number again. It had turned out to be a throwaway Samsung, purchased in Jersey City. Matt told me, “The FBI is leaving it alone for now. Until we see where it leads.”

“If it leads anywhere.”

“Yeah. I mean if you get killed in Jersey, they’ll probably add it to the to-do list.”

“Better think about those Yelp ratings, Mr. Mouth.”

So, for now, guns and bad guys.

I was particularly interested in pistols and long guns seized by John Law. And there were a lot of weapons in local, state, and federal hands. I focused on those taken from Neo-Nazis, the Klan, white supremacists, Aryan Brotherhood members.

What a mess!

As Matt had explained, there was no national registry of gun owners. Plus, there were all those guns that had never been registered.

But beyond that, we were dealing with human beings at every level of law enforcement. The lower down the chain, the more mistakes. That’s generally true and generally understandable. The locals work with smaller budgets, less training, a less professional work force. Exceptions, of course. Daddy.

So I wasn’t that surprised at all the dead ends as I pored over the oceans of confiscated-gun data.

> Distressingly often, no one even bothered to record the serial number.

> And even if a number was entered, there were often transcription mistakes. Just transposing two numbers threw everything off.

> Some local officers dutifully recorded irrelevant information — model, caliber, country of origin, name of importer. Not very useful without a serial number.

> Even the application of the identification information required by the Gun Control Act of 1968 varied — stamped, engraved, cast, laser-scribed, etc. The size and depth of the numbers and letters fluctuated too.

I started my eye-straining, brain-draining mission with federal weapons seizures. Like those ghost guns found in the Gunther compound. Through some papers found at the compound, those guns were traced to a three-person family in West Texas. Husband, wife, daughter. A small factory, already known to DC. A small factory, churning out gun parts with no serial numbers. Legal, because they weren’t selling guns — just kits.

Ghost guns, like bump stocks, were pretty much a dead end. For me at least.

I needed serial numbers. Real ones, accurate ones.

Vanessa and I were sipping wine, lazily looking out our Main Street windows. Holding hands, Leon Redbone instrumentals in the background.

Pilar came in and sat beside me, took a sip of wine. She spoke casually — she hadn’t yet learned that that’s a tell. She was concerned about something.

Vanessa smiled, “How you doing, honey?”

“Okay. Good.” She turned to me, “Winter, what’s it mean when a boy, someone like Jerry Simmons, says he wants to be my friend?”

“Sooner or later, panties will be involved.”

Constance Grayson and Ash Collins came to Kansas City. To Sandra Fleming’s FBI office at 1300 Summit. The last time they were both here was the day Wexler grabbed Constance and, eventually, was allowed to escape with Ash as his hostage.

Once again, I played chauffeur and not just because a certain guy joined them on the FBI jet. I drove the 200 or so miles from the airport to the Rafael, waited while the three of them checked in, then took them to downtown.

Sandra wasn’t effusive — she simply said, “Thank you,” to Constance. Thank you for taking the Wexler blame, thank you for salvaging my career.

Constance smiled, patted Sandra’s hand, and nodded.

Red Maplethorpe was in town from Pittsburgh to demonstrate the new software tracking program that was dedicated solely to the most virulent anti-government leaders. The Neo-Nazis, the white supremacists, the Aryan Brotherhood, the haters.

We — about thirty of us — crowded into the large conference room. The same room where we’d monitored Wexler’s slow-motion escape into those dark Minnesota woods.

Red said, “We have direct tabs on 87 ... let’s call them haters for discussion purposes. This doesn’t mean that we’re ignoring MS-13, other drug gangs. Nor black gangs. Nor suspected terrorists — foreign and homegrown.”

He explained what became known as Project Hater. “In Pittsburgh, we started calling these 87 men, and they’re all men, the Haters. That evolved into Project Hater and the name stuck.”