Murder At The Podium

by Alec Peche

  Pete wrote her a final note.

  Stay in the car with the doors locked.

  Jill was torn on following this direction. The two men exited the car, guns in hand and ran across the street approaching the car in a shooter stance, guns aimed at the occupants. She could see a patrol car coming from a mile down the road. Pete must have called it in. She wanted to hear what they found but all she could hear was a hum as though she was underwater in a pool. The patrol car soon pulled up and then down the road she could see an ambulance.

  The sight of the ambulance jarred her out of her hearing deprived stupor. She was a physician, she had a duty to attend the men in the other car even though they’d tried to kill her about five minutes ago. Castillo and Pete and the two additional officers were checking the men over in the car. She walked over to them, pad of paper in hand and wrote,

  “I’m a doctor, let me see the men.”

  On one hand she felt foolish writing a note to the two of them and on the other hand, she wasn’t sure they could hear over the noise of a bank alarm which was starting to sound shriller to her.

  She did a rapid assessment of the car and noted the men were not wearing seatbelts - probably no surprise there. Didn’t seatbelts get in the way when you were trying to throw flashbangs or aim a gun? Then she noticed and wrote a few words.

  “Adam’s not in the car.”

  Castillo and Pete had only seen his picture and as the men inside the car were covered in blood, they hadn’t immediately recognized that he wasn’t in the car.

  They spread out around the bank, and noted the back door was ajar and an alarm could be heard ringing from it. Behind the bank was a residential community similar to the one that they had sped through earlier.

  After a quick consultation, they split up and did a quick search of the first six house yards on both sides of the street. No backyard gates were ajar. The lights were on in the first two houses probably due to the noise of the car crash. They knocked on the door and yelled, “Police”.

  Frightened occupants opened the door in each case and indicated that no-one had entered the premises. Given the darkness, and lack of police resources to do a full scale search, it was all they could do for the time.

  Returning to the front of the bank, an additional ambulance had pulled up. They had extricated the front seat and back seat passengers, who were conscious and cuffed to the gurney. The driver would need the jaws-of-life to extricate him. Jill was holding pressure on something that was bleeding. The paramedics indicated they thought all three men would survive and Castillo took one man and Pete the other to see if they could get anything out of them, but since the flashbang had gone off inside their car, they were both momentarily blinded and deaf.

  The ambulance doors closed and, with an officer inside, the ambulance left for the local hospital. A fire truck arrived and they began wrenching parts of the car away from the driver. Twenty minutes later, the unconscious driver, was loaded into another ambulance and was gone.

  All of a sudden, Jill couldn’t hear the bank alarm anymore.

  She asked Pete, “Did you get the bank alarm shut off?”

  He looked at her puzzled, “What bank alarm? Banks have silent alarms to protect employees when a bank is robbed. If alarms go off, a robber will think about taking hostages. Did you mean the back door alarm?”

  Jill laughed because she heard about eighty percent of what Pete said.

  “My hearing must be coming back because I just heard most of what you said. The ringing in my ears was so bad, I thought I was hearing an audible alarm when we pulled up to the bank.”

  “That’s a flashbang grenade for you,” Castillo said. “Adam Johnson got away. Pete’s talking to the command post about next steps. Glad you can hear again; that was the scariest car chase once your hearing was gone, but you did really well and managed to read notes while chasing that car. That was excellent driving; I couldn’t have done better myself.”

  “Wow! I think that’s my first compliment from you Detective.”

  Pete walked up to them to brief them on the op.

  “They’ve captured the tanker-trucks close to El Paso. In addition, they picked up several men here at the various BDC warehouses and the two residences that were under surveillance. They haven’t seen any activity yet on the non-working oil rigs. We discussed doing an aerial search for Adam, but we’d just alarm the neighborhood and it would likely be fruitless by now. There haven’t been any gunshots from the cartel members elsewhere in the city. They’re waiting to hear from us on next steps.”

  “At a minimum, I think we should pile into the car and head over to Adam’s house,” Castillo said. “We should have probable cause for a search warrant that we could execute right now with a judge’s approval.”

  “The command post indicated we have a search warrant, so we’ll head over there now,” Pete said as they walked towards Castillo’s car. He put his hand out to Jill for the car keys which she gladly placed in his hand. It was approaching four in the morning and she had enough of an adrenaline rush to keep her awake until she hit the sack tonight.

  They pulled up to Adam’s house and Jill’s hearing had fully returned. She was really vulnerable to someone sneaking up on her and she was glad she could hear crickets in the bushes. There were no lights on anywhere that they could see from the outside. With body armor in place and guns pointed down, but ready, they approached the front door and rang the doorbell. Jill followed in their wake, purse over her shoulder and bug spray in her hand. After three more pushes of the doorbell which they could hear ring inside the house, there was still no answer.

  Castillo said to Jill, “Three children under the age of ten potentially inside?”

  “Yes.”

  Pete tried the doorknob finding it locked and said to them, “I can probably pick this lock; give me a moment.”

  Three minutes later they were inside with the lights on. Castillo said to Pete, “You do the search of the upper floor and I’ll have Jill follow me down here. Call down to me if you need help or if you come up empty.”

  A short, but fast heart beat time elapsed and their search turned up an empty house. Each time Castillo edged his way inside a room and opened closed closet doors, her heart jumped into her mouth and she held her breath. She felt like the world’s biggest chicken; on one hand she wanted to run out to the car and tell them to call her when they knew the coast was clear and on the other hand she wanted to climb into one of the closets and stay there until it was safe. It was a good thing that being a cop was not her occupation; she would have flunked out of the police academy out of imaginary fright.

  Castillo, Pete and Jill met in the central hallway and discussed how they would split up the search. Pete would take the upstairs again, and Castillo the lower level, but leave the kitchen to Jill. There also might be sheds on the property and they would search the exterior later, probably about the time daylight arrived.

  With children in the house, Jill had to think that Adam would have hidden his arsenic well out of view and reach of the kids and Stacy. At the same time, he had to have made the blueberry muffins somewhere. Jill carried with her a test kit for arsenic - she had potassium iodide liquid, powdered zinc compound and then mercury test strips. The arsenic could be grey, yellow or black in appearance and in a solid state on quartz rock or in liquid or powder form. She had a lot of ways to look for the substance. On the other hand, Adam could have taken whatever he used with him or discarded it after he made the muffins. It was available for sale online and easily replaced.

  Jill had a bet with herself that she would find it as a piece of quartz somewhere in the house on a high shelf as a decorative item. She was coming to know Adam and he seemed to cover up his lies with the thinnest of veils. She’d warned Castillo and Pete to look for the rock formed version as well. Standing in the kitchen she looked at the mahogany cabinets and started opening doors. There was also a laundry room off the kitchen and a pantry inside. She did a sweeping view of al
l the cabinets and surfaces looking for arsenic. Nothing.

  Crap, now she had to search through every nook and cranny of the kitchen and this room was her least favorite room in any house. She heaved a huge sigh and hunkered down to dig in. She was making lots of noise shifting pots and pans and glassware, dragging a chair around to see the tallest surfaces. She was on top of the chair peering into a tall cabinet when she felt cool air from somewhere. Glancing over her shoulder, she startled and let out a gasp.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  She looked into the eyes of Adam Johnson and then to the gun he was holding aimed at her. She froze then said, “Adam, what are you doing here?”

  What an incredibly stupid question, Jill thought; it’s the man’s house. What she meant to say was why had he come here while the police were searching his residence.

  “It’s my house; why wouldn’t I be here,” Adam replied. “What are you doing in my house?”

  Part of Jill’s brain was telling her to step off the chair so she didn’t break something when he shot her and she dropped to the ground. Another part of her brain was saying try the Lotus kick from her Tai Chi training. She could make a sweep of her foot and knock the gun out of his hand. She thought about that for a few milliseconds and decided that while she would have better balance on the floor, the height advantage of staying on the chair while executing the kick, and then making a run for the door was her better option. She just needed him to take a step closer.

  “We’re executing a search warrant and no one answered your front door. Why don’t I call the two officers here with me in the house and you can chat with them?”

  “Why don’t you shut up and climb down from that chair?”

  Ok thought Jill, here goes.

  She leaned back on her left foot, moved her arms like Bruce Lee and executed a Lotus kick that her instructor would have been proud of. She heard the gun clatter to the floor, as she overbalanced and went flying off the chair. She slammed into the kitchen cabinets hard, grunted, then was up and running for the door to the living room. A bullet hit the door frame inches from her head and she rounded the corner yelling, “Castillo! Pete! Help, Adam is in the house!”

  She kept running even though she didn’t hear any more shots. Castillo and Pete had both rushed to her. After quickly reassuring them that she was fine, they ran out the back door to see if they could catch Adam. Jill grabbed her can of bug spray ready to take aim if the wrong person came back through any of the kitchen doors. The two men returned in about twenty minutes and had had no sighting of Adam as they searched the neighborhood.

  “We didn't find him,” Castillo said. “Tell me what happened.”

  Pointing to the chair, Jill said, “I was standing on the chair searching the top shelf of the cabinets when I felt a cool breeze in the room. I looked over my shoulder and saw that Adam Johnson had entered the kitchen through the back door and was holding a gun on me. I debated what to do and decided to stay on the chair and try a Lotus kick to knock the gun out of his hand. When he took a step closer, I executed a perfect kick, but my momentum carried me off the chair and into those cabinets. The moment I could, I ran for the door and he fired the gun at me and you can see where the bullet grazed the molding. I kept going and yelled for you guys.”

  “Did he say anything to you?” Castillo asked. “Did he recognize you?”

  “I asked him what he was doing here and he replied by asking me what was I doing in his kitchen and yes, he recognized me. Guess I don't need any disguises anymore as he knows I'm working with the police. By the way, he had cuts on his face and hands which I presume are from the broken glass when the car hit the bank.”

  “What should our next steps be?” Pete asked Castillo. “Should we continue our search? Maybe we should check in with the command post, give them our update and see what else is going on in this op.”

  “Good idea,” Castillo agreed.

  On speaker phone, the three of them checked in with the command post. There was good news there. The two tanker trucks and their drivers were in the custody of the Texas Rangers. The other tanker trucks were found at the BDC warehouses and were also confiscated along with the men in the location of those warehouses and the two addresses. Overall, they had a total of twenty probable cartel men in custody. Law enforcement had spread out among the non-working oil wells and identified ten storage sites for precursor chemicals. Other non-working wells were still under investigation. The command post would be sending resources to support the three of them and it sounded like they were the only three living an exciting life chasing Adam Johnson. With more resources if they had any other sightings, they could chase after him through backyards and hopefully capture him next time.

  Jill had a couple of outstanding items that she wanted to review now that she was no longer worried about dying at the hands of Adam. Then she thought of something else to add.

  Jill relayed to the command post, “Besides Adam, there has to be at least one other person on the loose. He couldn’t have got back to his house as fast as he did unless he had a ride. We were a good ten minutes away by car and so he would have almost needed the speed of an Olympic marathoner to get from the bank crash site to his home in about the hour he had.”

  “Good point, Jill. Maybe the command post can work on finding his getaway car.”

  As they concluded their call, they heard the doorbell ring indicating additional resources were arriving. Jill wanted to get back to her laptop and check on a few things but first she showed the new arrivals a picture of what arsenic looked like in its various forms so they could continue the search of the kitchen without her.

  She looked outside to see if the sky was lightening up like it did as dawn approached and she thought in another half an hour they would have the assistance of the light of dawn to explore the backyard.

  She returned to her phone curious to see if Marie had found anything. She also wanted to complete the search of which oil rigs were visited by the tanker-trucks. There was an email from Marie and Jill opened it with that inner sense that this was it, there was some secret contained in the message. Likely if her hair wasn’t so tired from the hair-raising night it would have stood on end and tingled for her. Now it just sagged like her own energy levels.

  Jill opened and read the email, then she smiled at the phone.

  Castillo caught the look and said, “What did you find? You’re looking very satisfied.”

  “I didn’t find anything. It’s my brilliant teammate, Marie. It would appear that Vernon Oil’s CEO is either a puppet or dumber than a box of rocks. Adam and the CFO are the crooks and the CFO is likely the mastermind. Oh, by the way, Adam reports to him.”

  “Who’s the CFO and what did you find?” Castillo asked.

  “I’ll explain but as time is of the essence, can you trust me on this and ask the command post to round him up? The name is Brian Campos and there’s a picture of him on the Vernon Oil website.”

  As Jill requested, Castillo asked the command post to locate Brian Campos under the category of wanted for questioning for the movement of chemicals used to make illicit drugs. Then Pete and Castillo sat down to listen to her explanation.

  “From the beginning, I thought the CFO had to be crooked. How could he fail to notice that his oil profits were so much higher than any other company and that was with not all of his oil wells working? I figured that Adam couldn’t launder the money without internal help and the CFO again was the most likely person as he or his department would see the invoices. Follow my line of thinking so far?”

  The two men nodded.

  “So BDC stands for Benito Del Rio Campos; he owns those warehouses and he is then owned by a company that’s owned by a company that tiers into Sinaloa. The CFO is the nephew of Benito, who manages the Sinaloa cartel’s transportation network for all products. Benito is also the owner of PC transport, the trucking firm that moves the oil tanker-trucks. We appear to have a large cartel relationship underlining the leadership of the
company. Vernon Oil exists to sell a little oil and a lot of chemicals.”

  “How do you know that Vernon’s CEO isn’t involved?” Castillo asked.

  “We don’t know that for sure, but in looking at everything he is ever quoted as saying as well as his employment background, my expert in human resources teammate’s analysis is that the man doesn’t have a clue how he became so lucky as to get a higher per barrel oil price than anyone else. He appears to be mostly a silent partner, more interested in his cattle ranch that’s located in King County, which is some distance from here. He’s quoted as having ceded day to day operations to Adam and Brian. Among the other employees of Vernon Oil, only the truck drivers could have known that there was something in the tanker other than oil.”