Murder At The Podium

by Alec Peche

  Jill looked up the city of The Woodlands and noted that it was a large suburb of Houston. She looked back in her notes from her discussion with Adam and noted that he said she was from a city near the Texas/Mexico border. That description would not describe a Houston suburb. So which piece of information was a lie? What Adam had told her, what Stacy was alleged to have told Adam, or what she put down in her sorority’s application? When Jill had been a student in college she’d avoided the Greek houses. It wasn’t her kind of socialization. Besides she was one of those students who was also working and between school and work, there wasn’t time for a third organization in her life. Her impression of them was they were thorough in checking an applicant’s background so Stacy must have some connection or cover related to that city. Maybe she could track Adam’s and Stacy’s relationship from those college days.

  Jill searched the university where the couple attended school and then she backed up. She knew they had bachelor degrees but had one or both also pursued a Master’s degree? Was that where they met as graduate rather than undergraduate students? She looked up their profiles on the websites of the companies they worked for and then moved on to LinkedIn. There she learned that Stacy had a Master’s degree while Adam had a bachelor’s degree. So that meant she was back to the original college she started with; where Stacy was a sorority sister. She started with the national organization of that sorority and then narrowed down to the Houston campus location. She further narrowed the search of names and pictures to eleven to fifteen years ago.

  Soon she found younger photos of Stacy Miller which must’ve been her maiden name before her marriage to Adam. There were many happy times judging by the photos of Stacy. She sent an email to Marie that notified her friend of Stacy’s maiden name and moved on to search The Woodlands for the Miller family. She started with the property rolls for that city but there were several hundred Millers. How did she find out if there was a Miller family who had a daughter by the name of Stacy? If that was the case why did she tell her husband that her family was from the cartel? She decided to start with the local newspaper. Usually they published names of graduating high school seniors and if available where they were going to college. From the various police reports on the case, she knew Stacy’s birthdate and so she counted forwards to the likely year she graduated high school. There were about nine public or private high schools that Stacy could’ve graduated from. Thirty minutes later she found Stacy’s name among the many graduates of a large public high school. Jill was beginning to wonder more and more about Stacy having a link to the cartel. It was really beginning to feel like a lie. Again, who was the lie from …. Stacy or Adam? Maybe he made up the entire story to misdirect the murder investigation.

  Just to cover all bases she looked for a Stacy Miller in seven other Texas cities that sat on the Rio Grande River which was the border with Mexico. El Paso and McAllen had plenty of people by the last name of Miller but no Stacy Miller. The cartel was rumored to cross the border at El Paso or Laredo, but she could not find a Stacy Miller as a high school graduate of either city. There were sixty-nine Stacy Millers that lived in Texas and she was able to rule out all of them after an hour of research. A boring exercise Jill thought, but someday she would love to explore the Rio Grande. It appeared to be a beautiful river on Google Earth and it served as the defining border between the United States and Mexico.

  Jill thought she would take a break, get some exercise, grab her dinner from the hotel restaurant then return to her hotel room. She was 99% sure that the Stacy Miller from The Woodlands, Texas was the same person as Stacy Johnson from Odessa. It sure didn’t look like she was related to a cartel member.

  While she was running on the treadmill, she got an idea to check the wedding announcements. If Stacy’s parents were mentioned in that announcement, then it would surely point to Adam being the source of the fiction about Stacy being related to the cartel. Jill finished up her run, than grabbed a cheeseburger, French fries and an iced tea to take back to her hotel room. She glumly looked at the delicious food in her take-out container. It looked and smelled wonderful and was equal to about three times as many calories as she had just burned off running. How depressing.

  Sweaty and thirsty, she sat at the desk in her room eating her cheeseburger with her left hand, while tapping away with her right hand. She alternatively gulped down water or ice tea when she paused with the typing. This case was the first that she resorted to looking at wedding announcements as a source of information. It sounded really lame and a weak link for that idea as wedding announcements in the paper were becoming a thing of the past. Couples were choosing other means via the internet to mark special occasions. However this was ten years ago or more and perhaps couples were still using the newspapers in Texas for engagements and weddings. She spent the rest of the evening searching wedding or engagement announcements in the papers of Houston, The Woodlands, and the college town where Stacy had received her graduate education.

  Just as her eyes were drooping shut and her hips were becoming numb from sitting on the sofa, she found it- the wedding announcement of Adam Johnson and Stacy Miller. More importantly, there was mention of Stacy’s parents and grandparents. She stood up and stretched and thought that Detective Castillo and she would be having an interesting conversation with Adam Johnson in the morning. There was no doubt about it - he had lied to her about Stacy’s background and in a big way. She bet that the DNA sample would come back missing any heritage to the Sinaloa State of Mexico. She updated the detective and her records in separate emails.

  Barb Jordan meanwhile had sent her an email with her thoughts about Stacy. In their five conversations, she had looked back at her calendar to determine how many calls they had to prepare the presentation; Barb couldn’t remember Stacy mentioning her husband. She’d mentioned her children during almost every call, but nothing about the husband. She'd not thought that odd at the time - it didn't stick in her head that Stacy was having problems with her husband it was just when she thought back to all of their conversations she couldn't remember any mention of the husband.

  Okay, the case was growing that there was something off with Adam, but that was a long way away from having any evidence of Adam’s involvement in his wife’s murder. She’d sleep on this information and see what new angles she thought of in the morning.

  Chapter Fifteen

  She arrived at police headquarters intending to speak with Castillo. He had done a routine background search on Adam since the spouse was so often involved in a murder. They had asked where Adam was the morning of his wife's murder and it was verified that he was in the office in Odessa. According to Jill's timeframe and the mysterious room service and maintenance guy captured on the video, it wasn't the morning of her murder that they needed Adam's whereabouts - it was the day before. She'd also made plans to call Stacy's parents and interview them about their daughter. She'd been fortunate to find Angela free this morning and she had agreed to handle the call. Since they now knew that Adam had lied about Stacy's background, she was especially curious about the parents’ attitude toward Adam. Angela was recording the call and would send her the transcript later that morning.

  The DNA test had come back from the Austin lab. There was zero percent of any genetic heritage related to Mexico. Stacy was half United Kingdom and half northern Europe specifically German. It was kind of hard to be related to the Sinaloa cartel with that genetic background. Further proof that Adam had lied.

  Detective Castillo had been in a meeting and entered the space that Jill was occupying in the homicide squad.

  “Sounds like you've had a productive evening and early morning. Bring me up to speed.”

  “Last night I was searching through Stacy's college records and came across her maiden name. That led me to thinking about a wedding announcement from the family. I located that along with the name of Stacy's parents. Someone on my team is interviewing them in fifteen minutes. Also got the DNA results back and Stacy is not related
genetically to people that inhabit the Sinaloa state in Mexico or indeed any state of Mexico.”

  “Next steps?”

  “I think you and I need to set up an appointment to interview Adam Johnson. I know Odessa is a five hour drive from here but it’s a one hour flight. He’s surely up to something suspicious and he and Stacy have three children. If Adam is up to his eyeballs in the murder of his wife, then I think we need to think about the safety of those children somewhere in this equation.”

  “A guy I went to the police academy with works for the Odessa PD. When I got your e-mail last night, I asked for his assistance in putting the tail on our person of interest. This morning an older woman left the house with three children and dropped them off at school and day care. My contact thinks it's one of the grandparents that’s in residence with Adam. He's at work.”

  “Now would be a good time to fly in for a conversation with Adam with the children safely out of the way in school.”

  “Let's back up a moment,” Castillo suggested. “We know that Adam Johnson has purposely lied to us about Stacy's background. We’ve an unknown male who likely left a poisonous blueberry muffin for Stacy to consume. Besides a gut feeling, what shred of evidence do we have that Adam’s our murderer?”

  Jill paused and tried to think of a counter to the direction that Castillo was going but couldn’t.

  “Good point and one that I’ve been thinking about this morning. I checked your original notes on the case and you verified Adam was present in Odessa on the morning of her murder. He simply couldn't have been here to commit the murder that day. Now we need to verify that he was also in Odessa the previous day. Then we need to put the pictures of Adam and the two fake hotel employees through your facial recognition software, to see if a computer thinks they are the same person.”

  “Do you think they are?”

  “No, just having technology verify my opinion.”

  “So what would you suggest we do to find evidence to link Adam to this murder?”

  Castillo had a knack for getting on Jill's nerves. He vacillated between sentences with few words, to a sentence with hidden meanings, to finally asking her endless questions. For once, she'd like him to feed her answers. Okay, to be fair she been hired to do the job he was doing and if Castillo had time to do this himself he would have. After their conversation she was going to head to the cafeteria for a drink. Her brain needed to relax for a few moments and give thanks that the police department had hired her on the case. Each case taught her something new and gave her techniques for resources to use on future cases. But outside of Nathan and her friends, she wouldn't be admitting that wedding announcements were now a new source of information for her.

  “As long as Adam is under surveillance, I don't suppose there’s a need to rush over there immediately and speak to him. I'll work on framing Adam’s background this afternoon. By then I should have some information back from the interview of Stacy's parents as well.”

  “Jill, I don't disagree that we need to interview Adam at length. I just want to have more holes in his stories and more information about his background so that can be used in the interview. Give me that information.”

  “You're right of course. When I’m working in the private sector I wouldn't hesitate to pick up the phone and call Adam and ask him about the inconsistencies in his story. But this is your investigation and your rules which are much more confining for the police than they are for a private investigator. I’ll see what I can find on Adam since you’re keeping him under surveillance. How are your other cases going?”

  “I picked up a new suspicious death this morning. It’s a five year old, found by the mother when she went to wake her son up to get ready for school. It doesn’t get easier and I hate when a potential victim is so young,” Castillo said with a sigh.

  “I guess the flip side of your coin is I have never been called into an investigation about a child. The police seem to exhaust every resource getting to the bottom of such cases. When I worked for the state crime lab, I’d occasionally perform an autopsy on a child. I always hated them. It seemed that the child died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome which always devastated loving parents, or I found evidence of repeated child abuse which broke my heart. I don’t know if I’d take a case now if the victim was a child.”

  “Sure you would,” Castillo said. “For the same reason we cops investigate a child’s death - we all mourn that we weren’t around to protect the child and now that it’s dead, we owe that child; we owe it the lock-up of its abuser and killer so they can’t hurt another one.”

  “I suppose you’re right and the children of Dallas are lucky to have you looking out for them. I’ll get to work on Adam and leave you to figure out if the child is a victim and then to find its killer. I’m going to grab a bite to eat then hunker down with my computer here for a while and then in my hotel room. While I thought the cartel was involved with Stacy’s murder I thought it was better if I came and went in daylight and I’m sort of sticking to that routine. ”

  Castillo nodded and they parted ways. He had a heavy load and likely both the child’s and Stacy’s murder had generated more than the usual media attention. She liked that she was able to lighten his load rather than add to it. She wasn’t sure about his decision to wait on interviewing Adam, but she could really see it both ways - interviewing now versus later. As long as they weren’t worried about Adam disappearing or harming anyone else, then they could afford to wait and build the case against him.

  Jill grabbed an egg salad sandwich and a banana from the cafeteria. She’d really wanted french fries or potato chips to go with that sandwich, but she was doing a lot of sitting in Dallas and knew she couldn’t afford the extra calories. Perhaps now that she knew the cartel wasn’t involved, she could begin walking back and forth between the hotel and police headquarters during the daylight hours. In fact she would start later this afternoon with the walking route.

  Back at her desk, she sent an email to Marie about dropping the search on Stacy and adding if she had time to see what she could find on Adam. Then she opened Angela’s email on her interview with Stacy’s parents. Angela had also included the transcript of the call, but that was mainly for the police records as Jill trusted Angela’s assessment of the Millers. Angela wrote,

  That was a sad call. They are clearly deeply grieving for their daughter. They tried to be polite about Adam, but I could tell there wasn’t much love there. Other than at the funeral, he hasn’t allowed them to spend any time with their grandchildren which I find odd. They said when Stacy was alive they got to spend as much time as they wanted with the kids and even hosted them overnight during school breaks. They didn’t understand why he wouldn’t let them spend time together. I asked them if Stacy had ever voiced fear of Adam, and they said ‘no’. I asked them if Stacy had ever voiced any unusual events in her life - near misses. They said Stacy was driving back from a meeting in San Antonio and was driving through Texas Hill country when a truck tried to run her off the road on one of the hills in that area. She had to do some crazy driving and when she did go off the road after several bumps from the truck, her car didn’t roll as it was more a gradual slope. This occurred perhaps three months before her murder at the convention. They couldn’t remember any other problems that Stacy was having. They asked me what killed her and I told them arsenic poisoning. Adam told them she’d collapsed and died from a heart attack. I’m sure not liking this Adam character. They seemed like really nice people. The transcript of the call is attached.

  So someone had tried to kill Stacy prior to this convention. She’d ask Castillo to find the police report from that crash. She couldn’t see how it would be helpful, but you never knew. If Stacy had seen Adam driving the truck that tried to bump her off of the road, she was sure she would have reported that; and he would’ve been arrested. That suggested he’d had someone else involved in both that attempt and the actual murder. She got up and went over to Castillo’s cubicle but he wasn’t
there and so she approached someone else with the request for the police report. Fortunately, this officer had enjoyed her donut delivery and so was quick to bring up and print the report of Stacy’s accident.

  She took it back to her desk to study. As the parents had described, someone had tried to run Stacy off highway 305, a small two lane highway between interstate 10 and highway 385 to Odessa. Using Google Earth, Jill took a brief look at highway 305. It looked pretty flat to her and that made it hard to run someone off the road if there wasn’t a cliff to go over. She would have to assume there was an edge somewhere on that highway and that whoever had tried to push Stacy off of the highway knew that road well. The police report went on to describe the scratch marks in the back of Stacy’s car and the silver paint. Stacy had taken a picture of the retreating truck, but there was no license plate and there were thousands of that make, model, and color in the state. The vehicle was never found.

  So what changed in the lives of the Johnsons in the last two months that was so significant that Stacy needed to be dead? Had she discovered something? Was there another woman? Was there an insurance or other financial inheritance that was necessary to Adam? Had she made him so mad or jealous that killing her was the only way? It was time to focus exclusively on Adam.