The Voxlightner Scandal

by Don Travis

  “How much gasoline was used?” I asked.

  “Enough to cover the body,” Paul said.

  “Anything else on or around the body?”

  “Just the remnants of a burned-up rag. You know, like mechanics use to wipe their hands on. Wasn’t much of it left.”

  I rubbed my tired eyes and sat back in my chair.

  Paul read me pretty well. “What are you thinking, Vince?”

  Roy scowled. “What’s with this Vince business? I thought everybody called you BJ.”

  “There are always contrarians,” I replied, unwilling to explain it was a pet name. “Why the arson charade?”

  “Trying to make Belhaven’s death look like an accident,” the detective responded.

  “Obviously. But why? Roy, did Belhaven have life insurance?”

  He nodded. “Multiple policies, I understand.”

  “Who are the beneficiaries?”

  “The son and daughter. Two-point-five mil each.”

  “Which probably contain double-indemnity clauses in case of accidental death. This is just speculation of course. Have to see the actual policies to know my premise holds water.”

  “I get it,” Paul said. “The arson was to make it look like an accident.”

  “How old were the policies, Roy?”

  “Haven’t viewed them yet, but I understand they have gray hair.”

  “Have you found the murder weapon?”

  “Nothing in the garage looks plausible. Office of the Medical Investigator says it was probably metal, although the condition of the corpse makes that iffy.”

  “Something like a wrench?” Paul asked.

  “Yeah. Or an aluminum bat. And we didn’t find either one of those. Found some tools in a shed at the back, but none of them tested positive.”

  “Was the skin broken on his head? Enough so there was blood?”

  “Couldn’t say for sure… you know, because of the fire. No obvious evidence of it.”

  After another fifteen minutes of hashing and rehashing the situation, Roy took his leave while Paul and I tackled the appointment books again. Paul picked up the blue-clad volume for 2003. Within five minutes he let out an “Aha!”

  “What?” I asked.

  “You said Pierce mentioned readings? I got meter readings.”

  He shoved his book over to me. Under August 2003 Belhaven had made a terse comment: May-1800 kWhs; June-1825 kWhs; July-1829 kWhs. What the hell is up?

  I took kWhs to be kilowatt hours. There was no name or meter number or address, but the numbers had been significant enough to catch Belhaven’s attention. Why? Had his responsibilities involved monitoring accounts to watch for unusual readings? Did he keep an eye on friends or family? Was this part of his job, or was he simply a snoop?

  I got up from the table and went to my computer where I pulled up the New Mexico Power and Light bills for my home. After reviewing a number of monthly invoices for the past year, I reached the following conclusions: my average usage was around 700 kWhs and according to the utility company, the average household usage was around 650 kWhs. Belhaven spotted someone using around three times the voltage for a period of three months. Given the readings were spotlighted in his journal, he clearly believed the level of usage was unusual, and he knew the individual the meter belonged to. The penned comment “What the hell is up?” led me to that conclusion.

  I picked up the phone, dialed, and argued my way through a secretary to speak to an old golfing buddy of mine. He agreed to a meet.

  AT FOUR that afternoon Paul, Roy, and I walked into the plush office of Watson Moore, executive vice president of NMPL, which is how the public knew the New Mexico Power and Light Company. Back when we’d hit the links together, we’d called him Watt, a nickname we felt appropriate to his vocation. The moniker stuck.

  After a little light joking about various muffed shots on the fairways we both remembered—albeit differently—we got down to business. He heard us out before leaning back in his black leather executive chair.

  “Back in those days we kept an eye out for extremely unusual usage for a couple of reasons. Could signal a malfunctioning meter and alert us before we billed someone for a sum they wouldn’t be able to pay. And frankly—and as an ex-cop you know this well, BJ—it helped us respond to official requests to spot illegal activity, such as indoor marijuana cultivation and the like. And that was a part of Pierce’s job. Those readings would have been called to his attention.”

  Roy spoke up. “Can you identify the meter for us?”

  Watt nodded in his low-key way. “We should be able to find them, but it will take some time. Who do I call with the information?”

  “Call me,” I said, casting an eye at Roy.

  He raised an eyebrow but nodded. “Yeah. Call BJ. He’ll pass it on to us.”

  After noting down the information Belhaven highlighted for us, Watt ushered us out with a parting comment about a shot I’d sent into the duck pond on the Paradise Hills Golf Club the last time we played.

  As we stepped into the elevator, Roy turned to me with a grin. “Great work. Just a matter of time before we know the perp.”

  “What perp?” I asked. “What do three successive monthly electrical meter readings tell us?”

  Paul stepped into that one quickly. “Where to start our search for answers.”

  Chapter 5

  I DIDN’T wait for Watt to get back to us. Friday morning Paul and I looked up Richard Quintana, the CPA more or less forced into retirement by the looting of VPMR. I’d known Ricardo—as his intimates called him—casually for several years. He once flirted with gay life before deciding it wasn’t for him and marrying a nice young woman.

  Ricardo made a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp when he saw me standing on his doorstep, but he opened the door and stepped back to admit us. He groused all the way back to his study.

  “You’re here to stir up all that mess again, aren’t you? Needless to say, I’m not interested in contributing.” From the profusion of ledgers scattered around his home office, the CPA had not gone out of business, merely retained a few choice customers and worked solo out of his home.

  I put a cheerful note in my voice as Paul and I settled in chairs before his cluttered desk. “Sure you are. You’d like to see the perpetrators run to ground like everyone else.”

  “Thought that was already done.”

  “You mean Voxlightner and Stabler?” Paul said. “What if there were more people involved?”

  “Look, sonny, the time for blamestorming’s come and gone. The feds turned me upside down and inside out before putting me out of business and declaring me innocent.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Ricardo. Nobody’s declared innocent yet. The powers that be said there was no evidence you were involved. By the way, meet my associate, Paul Barton.”

  They nodded at one another; neither offered to shake hands.

  “We just want to get a better idea of the lay of the land. Do you mind if I record this, so I won’t have to take notes?” After he nodded consent, I did the prelims—identifying the time, place, and individuals involved—before striking up a conversation.

  “Those were pretty good days… back then, I mean.”

  “Twenty-oh-three started out all right. Course it didn’t take long to fall apart. When was it we invaded Iraq? Sometime in March, as I recall. My personal world was okay until the day Barron Voxlightner and Wick Pillsner introduced some of us to a fellow by the name of Dr. Walther Stabler.” Ricardo played around with the last name, making it clear he held nothing but disgust for the man. “That was a bad hair day, I can tell you.”

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “June 24, 2003. It’s stamped in my memory for the rest of my life. They invited me and Zach Greystone and Newt Williamson to lunch, and we walked in like eager puppies wagging our tails.”

  “An accountant, a lawyer, and a banker,” I said. “They went straight for the jugular, didn’t they? What was the
purpose of the lunch?”

  “About what you’d expect. Introduce us to that scam artist Stabler, talk up the project. But they didn’t come empty-handed. Barron financed some fire assays on material taken from the Green Mesa tailings.”

  From prior research I knew fire assays were tests conducted by labs using fusion to determine the amount of metals in a sample. In other words tests to determine the potential value of ore.

  “Green Mesa?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Tailings from the Green Mesa Copper Mine over in the Morenci District of eastern Arizona were gonna make us all rich. That shoulda told us something. The place wasn’t green, and it wasn’t on a mesa. Just five million tons of dirt out of a hole in the ground.”

  “Easy to see that now,” I said. “But back then everyone was hopeful. Tell me, do you think Barron and Stabler absconded with the company’s money?”

  “And left the rest of us holding the baby. They’re the ones who disappeared. Nobody woulda thought it of Barron in a million years. Almost killed the old man, I can tell you.”

  We spent another hour with Ricardo and fleshed out the picture a little. Barron financed a series of fire assays out of his own pocket, using the facilities of the highly regarded New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, which we locals still called the School of Mines. The assay reports Barron and Stabler passed around at the initial luncheon detailed commercial grades of gold and silver, with trace amounts of platinum. Heady stuff to dreamers.

  Further assays confirmed values of seventy dollars, almost twice what was commercially viable. Wick Pillsner, a pro at that sort of thing, put together a slick business plan. And when old Mr. Voxlightner put in money and lent his name, the race was on to get on the initial investors’ list.

  Ricardo fished around in his desk, pulled out a smooth, gray-streaked lump of metal, and handed it to me. “This is what was produced by the initial assay test. They call it a prill… or bullet or button.”

  The lump lay heavy in my palm. Lead or gold? Ricardo read my mind.

  “It’s gold all right. Maybe a little lead and some silver and a few other things. But it’s got enough gold and silver to grab a fellow’s interest. I keep it around to remind me not to let dreams overrule reason.”

  I tossed it to Paul, who examined the button critically before commenting. “I can’t believe a hunk of metal like this is enough to generate a public offering of fifty million.”

  “Young man, that little hunk of metal and a lot more like it were mental laxatives to the gullible, including me. Hell, I’ll bet you put some money in the venture, BJ.”

  “What little my cop’s salary allowed.”

  “Yeah, right. I knew your old man, remember?”

  “How far did they get with the actual project?” Paul asked.

  “They bought the tailings over in Arizona. Worked out a contract with ASARCO down in El Paso for the smelting. Had a mill site picked out in Socorro.”

  I threw a thumb at the prill Paul held. “Let me understand something. They conducted two assay tests?”

  “After they made this little button, they lumped a bunch of them together and ran them through another procedure to produce doré. That’s what they call the stuff they send to the smelter to be made into bars or ingots.”

  “I understand such tests are time-consuming.”

  “And expensive,” Ricardo said.

  “Did they do the two steps in tandem?”

  “They made the prill one day, allowed it to cool overnight, and did the second step the next morning.”

  “Who took possession of the prill in the interim?”

  “Stayed with the School of Mines. Dr. Damon Herrera locked it away where it couldn’t be touched.”

  “When everyone went back the next morning for the next test, were you allowed to physically examine the prill?”

  “Sure. Held it in my hands. Turned it over. Bit it. Smelled it.”

  “And you’re confident it was the same button produced the day before?”

  Ricardo nodded and accepted the prill from Paul. “The first day it was still glowing hot, so nobody could handle it. But it looked the same.”

  I tapped the button of metal now lying on his desk. “If I understand you, the School of Mines conducted the fire assay tests, not Dr. Stabler.”

  “That’s right. But he dictated what they used for the carbon source in the furnaces. Coal dust, ground charcoal, and whatever. Oh… and powdered lead oxide.”

  “What kind of furnaces.”

  “Big suckers.”

  “Coal fired?”

  He shook his head. “Electric.”

  Chapter 6

  A RESPONSE from Watt Moore at New Mexico Power and Light was crucial now that I knew the fire assays were conducted in electric furnaces. Even so I couldn’t rush things. He’d call as soon as he located the information.

  In the meantime I dithered over who to contact next. Hardwick Pillsner seemed to be the logical target. Wick had made a career of being a glad-hander. He’d been a football star, first at Albuquerque High and then for the UNM Lobos. Combining his local fame with a natural gift of gab, after graduation he struck out on his own, putting together business deals. At first he had no business sense, but Wick knew how to earn as he learned. He soon understood not only the jargon of the business community, but also the elements of a good deal. He married his high school sweetheart and built a family and a reputation. Older than I was, he remained too much of a jock to suit me. I’d grown out of that phase, but he never did. Nonetheless I enjoyed a decent relationship with him based on my Young America Football League years when he coached the Scorpions, my YAFL team. When I phoned he readily agreed to an appointment.

  Monday morning Paul and I drove to Wick’s one-story, slump-block office building at 3300 Lomas NE. The receptionist looked as if she fit Wick’s mold… curvy, bouncy, cute. She seated us in a loungelike waiting area, and after volunteering that Mr. Pillsner would be off a long-distance call momentarily, she offered refreshments. We both accepted water. I glanced around the spacious room as we waited.

  A soft, peach-colored material I couldn’t identify covered the overstuffed Chesterfield on which Paul and I rested. Two tufted barrel chairs sat opposite us across a low, circular piecrust stand used in lieu of a modern coffee table. Across the room stood an étagère holding pictures and mementos of Wick’s athletic career. A hidden fan wafted the faint scent of lilacs through the room. He’d spent some money on his reception area.

  “Did I tell you I filed my first story on the Voxlightner thing the other day?” Paul asked as we waited.

  “Who with?”

  “Journal,” he said. “Going down again this afternoon to talk to them about it.” There was an edge to his voice.

  “Again? Thought you did everything over the internet.”

  “Usually. But the editor asked for a couple of changes, and I wanted to meet him. Seems like a nice guy… good staff. I’m hotfooting it down to the paper as soon as we’re finished.”

  Wick Pillsner, with his hulking, athletic build and pug face, didn’t look like a paper pusher. He dominated any room he graced with his presence, including his own reception area. I could tell Paul was intimidated by the human dynamo who bustled in and swept us up in his enthusiasm. Never taciturn, Wick was always excited by something or someone. Before we were even seated, he was off and running about his latest project… a solar-powered energy panel. Eventually he ran down and leaned back in his plush executive chair, tapping a crystal letter opener against the palm of his left hand.

  “I hear you’re looking into the old precious metals scam, BJ.” His voice resonated with the suppressed energy of an evangelistic preacher.

  “That I am. We are, actually. And we’ve come to pick the brains of the guy who’s a walking encyclopedia on the affair.”

  “The fellow who suffered the most, I’d say. Sometimes I think I should have run for the hills like Barron and Walther. Except I didn’t have
the millions they made off the theft to sustain me. That scandal left me an extreme case of red ass, I can tell you.”

  “You put a lot into it?” I asked.

  “I put everything in it—my money, my time, my reputation. I didn’t work on another project for damned near a year. And don’t forget, my time is my money.”

  Paul waved around the richly furnished office. “Seems like you landed on your feet.”

  Wick rewarded him with a wan smile. “I can’t begin to tell you how much harder it was than it should have been. My reputation is what brings me customers. And it took quite a whupping back in ’03 and ’04.” He shuddered. “It was worse than starting all over.” He laid aside the letter opener and straightened in his chair. “How can I help?”

  Wick had been involved earlier and deeper than I’d imagined. In December of 2002, a business associate in Nevada introduced Wick to Dr. Walther Stabler and his plan to recover millions of dollars from copper-ore tailings. Wick professed to be interested when Stabler offered to fund a fire assay out of his own pocket on some sample ore. Wick was impressed but claimed to be wary. Once they worked out the elements of a deal, Stabler drove him to the Morenci dump. Wick took a dozen samples from various places and hired the New Mexico School of Mines to assay them. When each and every test proved to be commercial, Wick was convinced and stopped spending his own money.

  He took the deal directly to Marshall Wilson Voxlightner, the richest, most conservative natural resources man he knew. The old man was only mildly interested, but his son was fascinated. Barron and some of his cronies put up $250,000 to start the necessary preliminary work on the project. As it began to look like a true commercial venture, his father matched the initial amount, which provided the seed money for proving up the venture and getting a business and investment plan going.

  “Weren’t you paid for your time?” I asked.

  “Made a deal. I’d be paid in stock. Gave it all my time and got paid nothing. It was going to be my ticket to a beautiful retirement.”