Crescent City Murder

by Alec Peche

  “Yes,” replied Jill manipulating the controls and the video footage slowed significantly. “I flew it at one-hundred miles an hour as we feared the appearance of the monster truck. I knew I could slow it down later. I got about three acres around the field in question and I guess I got around 300 of the 360-degree circle before Lucy met her death. Maybe the monster truck didn't chase us because it thought it had destroyed the drone, but I honked at it and it wouldn't move so who knows.”

  “Jill, has anyone ever trained you in avoiding antagonizing bad people?” Briggs asked. “Police are trained in something called HRT or Hostage Rescue Team and I can assure that honking a car horn is not in our playbook.”

  “That's why I was there,” Nathan muttered under his breath.

  Briggs looked at him and gave him a look of sympathy.

  “I was just trying to play my role as a dumb tourist, mad that I crashed my drone. Too bad the driver missed the rest of my performance. I should add that we don't know if this is the same monster truck that encountered Mr. Cheval. I remember in our conversation with Keith that Julien said there was a cloud of dust kicked up by the monster truck, and we were on an asphalt surface with no dust.”

  “I took a couple of pictures of the truck so we have that for your records,” Nathan said, and Jill beamed at him with approval. He just raised his eyebrows back at her.

  The four of them stared at the slowed video of the drone. Jill sat back and said, “I don't know what I'm looking for, but nothing looks odd on this surveillance.”

  “I agree with you, but maybe I'll send it to our crime lab guys to see if they see something unusual,” Heyer said.

  Jill had been so busy that morning with moving her luggage, operating the drone and the two visits to the detectives, that she hadn't checked her email. After copying the drone footage onto a flash drive for the detectives, she glanced at her email to see if Jo had discovered anything.

  She opened an email from her from about an hour ago and read:

  'I was curious about those two companies we couldn't identify last night, and you know me I love a good business challenge. So as I sat in the seminar this morning, I did some more research and still didn't find anything which is very unusual for an American farmer. So then I thought of a recent scandal called the Paradise Papers which were a result of some computer hacker getting into the files of a law firm and exposing large companies with their off-shore tax havens, but again no trace of the corporation there. I'll keep looking, but I would advise you concentrate on that farm as it's the only one that's suspicious.'

  Jill finished Jo's email and decided to keep the contents to herself as there was nothing yet to report to the detectives. She wanted to study the video herself one more time to see if when she was focused, she might see something unusual. She looked over at Nathan who seemed to be drooping; likely his red-eye flight was catching up with him after the crash from the adrenaline rush over the encounter with the monster truck.

  “Unless you detectives want my input on something, I think we're done for the day. I do plan to watch the tape another time, but I can't think of anything more to do on this case at this moment in time.”

  “We appreciate your help and the sacrifice of Lucy. I'll let you know if our lab comes up with anything. Meanwhile we have an appointment to talk to Mr. Cheval's son and the child's mother. We also have a message into Ms. Fontaine seeking the results of the sample Mr. Cheval took during the first interaction with the monster truck. We asked yesterday about that and still don't have an answer from her office.”

  A few minutes later Jill and Nathan were walking through the French Quarter again on the way back to their hotel. There was a little more activity in the bars along the way and Jill had made a slight detour to a restaurant that Alicia had taken her to that had been serving Po'boy sandwiches since 1950. It wasn't a fancy place, but Jill liked their food and figured that one of the sandwiches would sit well with Nathan and likely help put him to sleep.

  “This feels like a pizza parlor given the level of noise in here,” Nathan said.

  “Yes, but it doesn't smell like pizza does it?”

  “No, and I think that's due to a wide variety of ingredients in their sandwiches. They have some fishy smelling fish on the menu and yet I can see you're content with what is essentially a grilled cheese sandwich.”

  “Yeah, you know I don't like many varieties of seafood and even less as a sandwich, but clearly I'm in the minority. I thought you would be conflicted between catfish and alligator sausage which sounds gross to me, but I can see you love the alligator.”

  “It's not something you find at home. We don't have alligators and while I've had catfish in California, it's not revered like it is here and certainly I haven't had Cajun cooking. I can see I'm really going to enjoy eating here.”

  “There's a shop a few blocks over that sells all kinds of sauces that are specific to this region. I tried a few of their hot sauces just to confirm that I don't like hot sauce and I don't.”

  Nathan laughed at Jill's persistence at proving to herself that she didn't like some foods. She'd come around on avocados, but pretty much had not moved on any other of her food hates.

  They finished their lunch and continued a few blocks back to the hotel. When they entered the hotel room, Jill felt like crying when she saw the empty drone case. At least Lucy had died valiantly, now Jill had to find something unique in that footage while Nathan got a few hours of sleep.

  He settled into bed, and Jill took her laptop down to the hotel restaurant where she could make noise and talk to herself without disrupting Nathan's sleep. With a diet cola at her side, she again watched the video footage and again saw nothing that peaked her interest. How else could she look at the tape? She could study buildings and vehicles, or perhaps crops. The trouble with studying crops was she didn't know the appearance of some of the Louisiana crops. Today, she'd taken a guess on soybeans, but what did cotton or tobacco plants look like?

  On her next run through the video, she broke the screen up in a grid and this forced her to examine and identify every blip on the video. Her camera on the drone took thirty frames per second or about nine-thousand frames of video. By her calculations, she needed to study about every hundredth frame or so, but ninety was a lot and she'd leave that to the New Orleans crime lab; they probably had a software package that made this kind of analysis easier. So she did some more calculation and backed that up with video study, she could study every nine-hundredth frame and collect all of the details. With this in mind, she studied homes, cars, tractors, and barns. Interestingly, there were no people out in the fields. Jill wondered if it was the growing cycle of the crops or just a time of day thing. She noted that she didn't see where the monster truck had come from and if it weren't for Nathan's quick thinking they wouldn't have a record of it.

  Her eyes were straining with her study of the minute detail and the seemingly unchanging view. She stood up and stretched and walked a little before sitting back down. She needed to find something in this footage, she hadn't wanted Lucy the drone, to die in vain. She was on her third pass when she noticed something on a farm plot devoted to corn. She slowed the video way down and looked at it in at least ten different areas of the same field. She would enlarge the frame compare the plant to pictures of the plant she thought it was and then move on to the next frame. The cornfield produced between $6,000 and $7,000 in grain sales, but between the rows of corn was a crop that brought in $3.2M by her calculations and that was enough to kill for. She looked for additional corn fields in the footage she had and her phone rang making her jump at the interruption to her concentration.

  “This is Jill,” she said into the phone still staring intently at the video footage.

  “Hello Jill, this is Professor Watson from UC Davis regarding your evergreen question.”

  “Oh, hi Dr. Watson. Do you have an answer to my nutmeg question?”

  “Yes I do and can I say that my students had a great time testing y
our idea if nutmeg could be made tasteless yet still retain its poisonous properties. The answer is yes it can.”

  The professor took several minutes to explain the experiment she'd designed with the students. They had even gone so far as to feed one of their lab rats the concoction they created and they noticed the effects of the poison on the rat. Best of all according to the professor she and her students had new information thanks to the experiment and they could publish the results in a botany journal. Jill paused for a moment and then asked what she thought would be the first question the detectives had about these findings:

  “Would you testify in court about your experiment and its results if the detectives need you to explain how it's possible to poison someone with nutmeg?”

  “I've never been called for my scientific opinion on a botany matter. As long as the police department paid my travel there, I would testify about this experiment with nutmeg. Do you think they'll make that request?”

  “I don't know. I don't know how the court system works in Louisiana. If they give me a sense that they'll be asking you in future to testify I'll drop you an email relaying that information.”

  “Thanks that's all I can ask. You have a good day Dr. Quint.”

  Jill ended the call and was about to call the detectives when she saw Nathan walking toward her looking refreshed from his nap.

  He sat down next to her grabbing her glass for a swig of diet cola.

  “You're looking chipper. I think the nap must've done you a lot of good.”

  “It did. Just before I put my head on the pillow, I felt like I was walking around in a slightly dizzy fog and now my mind is clear. Did you discover anything while I was asleep?”

  “I discovered lots of things when you were sleep. I'm wondering how the detectives will take some of this information as I think the police in the parish in which that field is located might be involved.”

  Nathan looked at her puzzled and asked, “Are you suggesting that one or more police personnel located in that parish might be crooked?”

  “Maybe, then again I had to look a few times at the crop to realize what it is. I don't know how big this parish is or how much their law enforcement knows each and every farm field and that parish is just a question in the back of my mind.”

  “What's the crop that you're suspicious about?”

  Chapter 16

  “Marijuana. After the umpteenth time that I stared at that video, I finally noticed something growing between each row of corn. I enlarged the picture and searched different parts of the cornfield to confirm my finding of marijuana. Guess what an acre of marijuana sells for on the market,” Jill asked.

  “I guess it depends on whether it's legally or illegally in the state. If it's an illegal crop, I would guess it's at least ten times the price of what it would be if it were a legal crop.”

  “It also depends on what state you're growing hemp in. Turns out in Washington, many farmers are facing bankruptcy as the taxes are high and the demand not what they expected. In California, some farmers are hoping to buy out the Washington farms for expansion. Louisiana is a conservative state and it has approved marijuana for medical reasons only. It proposes to grow its marijuana on college campuses hoping that that will be the way the state can control the production of hemp and help the schools with revenue from medical marijuana sales. It's an interesting concept. Bottom line is this cornfield with marijuana in it is illegal.”

  “What did the detective say about that?”

  “I haven't told him yet is I had just finished discovering the crop. Then my expert from UC Davis called with news about nutmeg. So now I have two things to report on and I was just about to call them and you walked up. Let me make this call and then we can decide what we want to do with the rest of the day. I'm not sure there is additional work for me on this case at this point.”

  “Have you identified the owner of that acre?”

  “No, Jo is taking the lead to find out who the owner is and surprisingly she's not having success. She then resorted to the Paradise Papers created by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, but I haven't heard the results of that research yet.”

  “What are the Paradise Papers?”

  “Last year a hacker got into the files of this law firm in the Cayman Islands. This particular firm does a lot of secret corporations to hide from public view the assets of people like Queen Elizabeth, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, several Presidents and Premiers of countries around the world. The hackers walked away with this huge data dump that journalists around the world could use for research.”

  Nathan looked worried and said, “This case is taking on a life of its own. Weren't you called here because someone died from evil spirits and now you think someone involved in the Paradise Papers might be involved in this case? I think it's time to pack your bags and head home to California.”

  “It is starting to look far more sinister than it did when I was standing over Mr. Cheval in the autopsy suite. Let me call the detectives.”

  Jill reached them in their car as they were returning to the office after interviewing Jayden Cheval's mother. They agreed to swing by the hotel to look at Jill's conclusions.

  “Sorry but it looks like we'll have to delay our plans for a little bit while I talk to the detectives. The nice thing about New Orleans is that in many ways it's a twenty-four seven city.”

  “Don't worry about it. I'm far more concerned about your safety given who might be your opponent in this case. If Jo does find a connection to the Paradise Papers, then your opponent is likely filthy rich. You're driving me to drink so I'm going to go have a discussion with the bartender and see if I can find a local drink I should try.”

  “That sounds like an excellent idea. If nothing piques your interest, try a mint julep. I know that's a drink native to Kentucky, but it's a southern drink and mint sounds good on a hot, muggy day.”

  He gave her a thumbs up and headed toward the bar. She was sitting in the lobby of the hotel and had found a quiet corner to do her research. Now she stood up both to stretch her muscles and to be on the lookout for the two detectives. She saw them enter the lobby and waved her arms to catch their attention.

  She decided she tell them about the nutmeg first.

  “My botany contact at UC Davis confirmed it's possible to make nutmeg tasteless but still in a high enough concentration to kill. She's going to get a scientific paper out of our question and so if this case goes to trial, she's willing to be your botany expert should you need one. Here's her business information to pass on to the attorneys at the appropriate time.”

  “Okay thanks for running this down for us,” Heyer said. “What did you discover from your drone footage that has you on edge?”

  “I'm going to play a part of the footage for you and see if you can detect what's wrong with this picture. It took me three tries to see the problem, but since you're detectives, I'm sure you'll be much faster than me.”

  Both detectives gave her raised eyebrows but then settled in to watch the video, just as they hit repeat, Nathan arrived with their drinks.

  “Would you detectives like me to fetch you something from the bar? I know you're on duty, but they do have soft drinks or Shirley Temples.”

  “I'll pass on the Shirley Temple, but my partner and I would love any kind of diet soda,” Heyer said and Nathan made his second journey to the bar.

  On the second pass through the field, Jill knew that Briggs had seen the problem when he commanded, “Freeze the frame.”

  Heyer continued to stare, but Jill could see she didn't recognize the problem.

  Briggs looked at Jill and said, “I did a stint in narcotics before I became a detective, Heyer here missed that particular hell. We see what looks to be an entire acre planted with corn as we would expect, and marijuana between the rows of corn. That crop might have a street value of three to four million.”

  Heyer got closer and stared intently at the picture. “You're right, I know no
thing of narcotics other than what I came across as a patrol officer or learned about in the police academy. Certainly, I've never seen it growing in a field and I might've looked at it as either a weed, and isn't that ironic as it is a weed, or I might've thought that it was mint, like that leaf in your drink Jill.”

  Looking at Detective Briggs, Jill asked, “I think this marijuana is being grown in the open. If law enforcement had ever driven down that street, they would've seen the crop and wondered at it? Right?”

  “Did you see it when you got out of your car with the drone?” Briggs asked.

  “No, but then I think I was so worried about some hulking monster truck that I was blind to my surroundings when we pulled up to the field. Besides if I were a pot grower, I would put a stock of corn at the end of the row to hide the marijuana behind it. Let me try Google Earth to see if I can see the plants from the street.”

  Jill did so, but the crop that was there was very different from the alternating rows of corn and marijuana. “That looks like a soybean plant so that must've been what was planted at the time that Google plotted this part of the world.”

  Jill then pulled out a Google forum, and they could see that the company had no plans to visit Louisiana to update their maps in the near future.

  “The other problem with this plot of land is I haven't been able to identify who owns it.”

  “That's simple we can just find that out from the county tax records.”

  “Good luck with that, I couldn't find tax records through my searches. I also did another search on owners of acreage in that area and there are two corporations that teammates and I have been unable to identify.”

  “I want to get our ducks in order on this. It's not as though someone can make an entire crop of marijuana disappear. They could cultivate the corn and marijuana but from your footage of the field, it's not ready and they would destroy the value of both. I think our monster truck has something to do with protecting that crop and since you crashed your drone into it, they more than likely think you lost any film it was collecting,” Briggs said.