Erick kid, you oughta check him out.”
Shaw replied, “He doesn’t seem to have any connection with supremacists. No history of hate crimes.”
Harper’s eyes narrowed. “You know, Adam took off for a while. He was away for three weeks, a month, I don’t know. After we lost Kelly. He just disappeared and when he came back he was different. He was better, his moods. I asked him where he’d gone. He said he couldn’t talk about it. Maybe he hooked up with some of those assholes then.”
“Where?”
“No idea.”
“Can you give me the names of friends I can talk to?”
A shrug. “Couldn’t tell you. He wasn’t a boy, you know. He had his own life. We didn’t chat on the phone, like he did with his mama.” Harper received a text and then replied. Looked over the still water of the harbor. Then back to the cartons.
“Was he straight?” Shaw asked.
“You mean … like, not being gay?”
Shaw nodded.
“Why you wanta ask something like that?”
“I need all the facts I can get.”
“Only ever saw him with women. None of ’em for very long.” A sigh. “We tried everything with him. Therapy. Yeah, that was a joke. Medication. Always the most expensive ones, naturally. And that was on top of Kelly’s bills too. Doctors and hospitals.” He nodded toward the shack that was the corporate headquarters for Harper Ship Services, Inc. “I look like I can afford Cadillac health insurance?”
“Nothing worked for Adam?”
“Not much. Just being away wherever he went, that three or four weeks.” The crowning carton was placed on the stack. “Maybe he got a kick out of learning to burn crosses and spray paint churches. Who the fuck knows? I got paperwork to do.”
Shaw gave him a card with his number on it. “If you hear from him.”
The man slipped it into his back pocket and gave a cynical smile, which meant: Helping you get your blood money.
“Mr. Harper, I want to get both of them back safe.”
Harper turned but paused halfway to the shed.
“It was so damn frustrating. Sometimes you just wanted to shake him and say, ‘Get over yourself. Everybody’s got the blues. Just live with it.’”
Back in the Winnebago, Shaw brewed a cup of strong Honduran coffee, poured in some milk and sat down at the table.
He spent the next half hour or so calling some of the Youngs’ relatives. They were sympathetic but had no helpful information. Then on to Erick’s friends. Those willing to talk could offer no insights into where he might have gone and generally expressed dismay that he’d been implicated in a hate crime. One classmate, however, said that since his brother died “he’s just like … he’s not really himself, you know what I mean?”
Shaw spoke to Tom Pepper, a former FBI special agent and a friend with whom he rock-climbed occasionally. Pepper may have been retired but he was just as connected in law enforcement now as he had always been and was current on a robust security clearance. He also enjoyed staying in the investigation game and Shaw sometimes called Pepper for an assist. He now asked for the name of somebody involved in the investigation, either in the Pierce County Public Safety Office or the local FBI field office.
A reward seeker’s relationship with the police is complicated. Law enforcers have no problems with tip lines, like Crimewatch, whose purpose is to gather information from those who have personal knowledge of an incident. Cops are, however, reluctant to give much assistance to an active investigator like Shaw. Reward seekers, as opposed to tipsters, have been known to muddy up cases, occasionally even resulting in a suspect’s escape when police were close to an arrest. Seekers also sometimes end up injured or dead, which complicate a cop’s life to no end.
Still, Pepper’s name carried some weight and so did his assurance that Shaw wouldn’t get underfoot and could even possibly prove helpful. The Pierce County detective running the case, Chad Johnson, spent ten minutes filling Shaw in on the details, which Shaw recorded in his notebook. Johnson provided particulars on Adam Harper, supplementing what the young man’s father had said.
When they disconnected, Shaw made another cup of coffee and flipped through the notebook.
June 7. Around 6:30 p.m. Erick Young went to the Forest Hills Cemetery on Martinsville Road in Gig Harbor. This is where his brother, Mark, who died sixteen months ago, is buried. He went to the gravesite frequently.
At some point shortly thereafter, Erick was seen in the company of Adam Harper in the cemetery, according to witnesses. Erick had no apparent prior connection with Adam.
At around 7:30 police responded to reports of a shooting at Brethren Baptist Church. Victims—a lay preacher and a janitor—reported that two suspects, later identified as Adam and Erick, had placed a cross in front of the church and set it on fire. The church was also defaced with Nazi swastikas and obscenities.
When the preacher and janitor ran outside to try to tackle the suspects and hold them for police, Adam drew a gun and shot at them, hitting both.
The suspects fled in Adam’s ten-year-old red Toyota pickup truck, registered in Washington State. Erick’s car was found parked near the cemetery.
None of Erick’s social media posts suggest racist leanings. Adam has no FB, Twitter or Instagram account.
Neither is gay; unlikely there was a sexual encounter.
None of Erick’s other family members or friends have heard from him. There is no particular location he might have run off to that his parents and friends know of.
The authorities were forensically able to link the defamatory graffiti on the Brethren Baptist Church to similar incidents in Pierce County over the past year and a half.
The suspects are believed to still be in the Tacoma area, since both Adam and Erick emptied savings accounts over the past several days, and there have been two sightings of the pickup via video surveillance. Probably gathering money for a long-distance escape from the area.
Erick Young has been working part-time in a rehabilitation center for troubled youths and getting a B.A. at a local community college. He excelled in math, history and biology. But after his brother’s death, he became moody and his grades dropped and attendance at work became a problem. His girlfriend broke up with him because of his moods. Parents described him as “confused and vulnerable.”
Adam Harper has a history of depression and other emotional problems. A drifter. He’s taken classes at community college but never graduated. He’s worked trades most of his life.
He has been arrested on shoplifting and minor drug possession charges. He has no obvious history of white supremacist or racist organizations, though father pointed to his disappearance for 3 to 4 weeks out of town. Hooked up with a group
