Campanelli: The Ping Tom Affair

by Frederick H. Crook

  “How can you tell that?” Frank asked as he stepped closer for a look at the material.

  “You can’t tell by looking upon its surface Campanelli,” Rothgery spoke as if to a child. He rolled his eyes to the ceiling and placed his hands behind his back.

  “So how’s about you tell me what the difference is, professor?” Frank fired back.

  “It is in the manner that the material has been woven. A simple difference in patterns. I can show you if you like,” Howard explained in a tone that hinted of boredom.

  Frank stared into his face for a heartbeat. He did like and trust the man, but he would never have said it. “Will that fact hold up in court?”

  “Well, yes,” Rothgery answered, surprised. “It is easily proven.”

  “Good enough. What else?”

  “The glass is not glass, but very thick acrylic.”

  “The car is an armored gangster mobile,” Williams concluded.

  “Through and through,” Rothgery agreed. “Further, there is not a single fingerprint to be found in the cabin. Not even a partial, unusable print.”

  Campanelli got the inference and bent over to inspect the melted dashboard. “The report indicated no computer which means no driving aids. This was a hand-built job.”

  “Exactly,” confirmed Howard.

  “And, no prints means that it was cleansed after it was used to transport the bodies.”

  “Indeed.”

  “How long until the DNA is ID’d?” Frank asked as he stepped around to the front of the car, eyeing it as he went.

  Rothgery looked over to Wilkins for the answer. “Give me two minutes,” she answered.

  “A gangster car is pretty expensive, Frank,” Williams said from his side.

  Campanelli agreed with a two-syllabled grunt. “Why not simply steal something to dispose the bodies?” he asked out loud. “Or even drive the thing into the river with the bodies in the trunk. They had to know this thing wouldn’t burn well.”

  “It burned enough,” Marcus said.

  The three men and one woman were silent as they thought and worked. Rothgery watched Campanelli carefully. He barely knew Williams, his extra-large partner, but Howard judged that he had a sharp mind as well.

  “Can all this…armor be used again?” Frank asked, his body becoming still as a statue as his artificial lenses inspected Rothgery’s face.

  “Certainly. The fire never approached the melting point of any of the materials. Everything else about the car is destroyed but that.”

  “What’s the street value of all this, carbon fiber, acrylic glass and…whatever?”

  “Meta-aramid fiber,” Rothgery reminded. “It’s almost priceless. There’s only the one factory in China that makes the meta-aramid. The carbon fiber can be recycled, but it’s still made here in a few places. Same goes for the acrylic.”

  “So it would make a lot of sense for us to recycle it.”

  “Generally, that’s what the CPD does,” Howard explained. “If the wreck isn’t lost or stolen from the lot.”

  “That happens quite a bit, doesn’t it?” Williams asked of both men.

  “Yep,” Frank answered first.

  “There’s no manpower to guard the impound lots on a regular basis. Anyone watching them knows when to break in,” Howard provided as the young assistant, Teri Wilkins stepped up.

  “We have positive ID on one Mickey Wong. His DNA’s in the trunk along with the other victim’s,” she announced victoriously.

  “What about an ID on that second guy?” Campanelli asked as he stepped to her side to view the evidence upon her handheld device.

  “He’s not on file here,” Wilkins said, “I’ve sent it on to the FBI to see what they have.”

  “Very good, thank you, Miss Wilkins,” Frank granted with a nod and headed for the door. “Mister Rothgery,” he called over his shoulder and tapped his temple with two fingers to bid farewell. Rothgery nodded in response.

  “What now, Frank?” Williams asked as he elongated his stride to catch Campanelli in the hall.

  “I get permission from the Chief for a stakeout.”

  “What are we staking out?”

  “That car,” Frank answered and thrust his thumb in the direction of the garage.

  Frank went to his desk and sat. Williams pulled up another chair next to him. Campanelli activated the terminal and linked to the communications screen. Dialing the Chief’s office, his secretary answered.

  “Captain Campanelli for da Chief,” he said flatly. This girl was another new one that he had never seen before. Vanek was a picky and demanding boss and went through receptionists like cigars.

  “One moment,” the girl answered and was replaced by the CPD emblem. A scant few seconds went by before Vanek appeared.

  “Frank,” he greeted.

  “Chief.”

  “Break in the Wong case?”

  Frank explained the findings in the Lincoln and his plan. Vanek was quiet and his eyes were attentive as his subordinate described what was needed.

  “Agreed. Go ahead and place the car in ‘seizure’ status. Carry on with your plan with two stipulations. One, put it off until the day after tomorrow. That’s Friday night. I have something I need you on this evening, so cancel any plans. This means you, too, Williams.”

  “Yes, sir,” Marcus agreed.

  “Second, I think we may need to spice up your plan by letting the press in on the investigation. I can get together with my network contacts and leak the story, giving hints to the car’s location and the DNA evidence found in the trunk.”

  “That sounds fine, sir,” Frank said.

  “If you’re right, we should see results within the first two, maybe three nights,” Vanek thought out loud. He then laid out the details of the evening assignment.

  Frank did everything he could to keep from grimacing.

  That evening was cool but comfortably so for a late spring evening. The sun had gone down just minutes before, leaving the western clouds alight with streaks of brilliantly deep reds and fiery orange lying in a bed of blues.

  Frank had parked the cruiser between two small hangars located on O’Hare International Airport’s northeast corner. These buildings housed the aircraft of private individuals and the luxury jets belonging to corporations. Across from them were more hangars and small workshops where mechanics and customizers housed their wares and repaired airplanes. Only a few of these structures had any active companies within them and only one was open for business at the moment. The overhead door was open, revealing the activities inside. Within ten minutes of the sky falling to darkness, there remained only one employee.

  Frank enhanced his vision, zooming in to grab the individual’s facial details. Taking an image once the man turned his face in his direction, Campanelli ran it against the CPD computer. Sharing the information with Williams’s CAPS-Link, Frank read the biography aloud.

  “Trane, Michael C. Birthdate, May sixteenth, twenty-sixty-seven.”

  “Looks pretty good for forty-one,” Williams commented.

  “Cool your jets,” Frank said as he turned to him. “He’s not your type. Married with child.”

  “Ha…ha,” Williams said with a crooked grin.

  “Never committed a crime in his life,” Campanelli added once he had read further.

  “He doesn’t seem the type to rub elbows with a Chicago alderman.”

  “He is if the alderman needs transportation arranged.”

  “True,” Marcus admitted.

  The two detectives sat quietly watching the lone airplane mechanic work at the fabrication computer as they waited. After a few minutes, an officer from one of the patrol cars called over the radio.

  “Five-One-Nine to all. I have contact with a car. Dark gray. Rolling north…turning now onto the tarmac leading to the hangars. Coming your way, Captain.”

  “Roger that, Five-One-Nine,” Frank called back.

  Less than thirty seconds went by before the automobile roll
ed past. Its headlights lit the areas between the hangars with ambient reflections. The mechanic looked up in time to see the light dance over Frank’s police cruiser. Trane’s electric blue lenses remained on the parked car and seemed to lock on to Campanelli’s.

  “Damn it,” Frank said. “If he’s working with the traffickers, he’s made us.”

  “Five-One-Nine. Plates on the gray sedan just came through. Corporate vehicle. Here on routine drop-off of executives for scheduled flight. Not our fish.”

  “Acknowledged,” Campanelli sighed as he started the car. “I’m moving my cruiser. We have been spotted by the subject in mechanic’s shop.”

  Frank commanded the car to reverse to the far end of the hangar. The whole time, Trane watched them warily. Once the cruiser was out of the mechanic’s line of sight, Campanelli directed it northward. Driving two hangars down, he turned the cruiser east and proceeded to the front of it. From this new perspective, neither detective could see Michael Trane inside the shop, but the lights were still on and the door remained open. As far as they could tell, he had not run.

  “What now?” Williams nearly whispered.

  “Comm?” Frank called to the dashboard interface.

  “Comm here,” another officer responded in a quieted tone. He and two others manned the communications truck which was parked inside the fire brigade’s headquarters less than a mile away.

  “Subject inside the shop’s made us. Has he called anyone?”

  The radio was as quiet as the night itself for several heartbeats. “Negative. Not even a thought,” the technician confirmed. The monitoring equipment could pick up everything, including the text messages sent from a person’s bio-electronic implant from that distance.

  Frank glanced at Marcus, relieved. Perhaps the mechanic is just a mechanic.

  “Thanks, Comm.”

  Several minutes went by. The men that had been driven to the hangar to the north of Frank and Marcus could be seen milling about the outside of the hangar while they waited for their aircraft to be ready. In a few minutes, the twin jet was pulled outside and the executives boarded. Moments later, the plane’s engines whined to life and it began to taxi away.

  “Hey,” Williams called over the noise. “What’s that?”

  “What?” Frank asked and looked to his partner. It was instantly obvious that Williams was hearing something beyond the jet engines. Marcus placed a finger to his left ear and jerked his right thumb up in the air. Campanelli took the hint and boosted his implanted network’s audio receptors. “Helicopter!” he shouted and jumped out of the vehicle.

  Marcus joined him and the two detectives stepped out onto the tarmac. Adjusting his eyes for night, Frank scanned the sky all around. Williams was doing the same, but neither could find the aircraft. The sound of the biting rotors bounced from structure to structure, covering the craft’s direction of approach.

  “Unit Thirty-Three. We’re hearing a helo,” came the audible message over both their implants, relayed by the cruiser.

  “Anybody have a direction?” Frank composed and sent in kind. Thirty-Three answered in the negative while another patrol car reported.

  “Two-Eighty! It just passed over us. Heading to your location, Captain! Fast and low!”

  “Frank!” Marcus howled over the percussive blasts of air and the fading scream of jets.

  Turning to his partner, Campanelli followed the man’s finger to a dark blob that defied description. “All units converge!” he sent to all officers in the area.

  The spinning blades of the helicopter fanned the dust of the tarmac into large, demonic wings which fluttered into the air. From behind Campanelli and Williams came two police cars, their sirens crying out to be heard over the aircraft’s noise. Frank tugged Marcus’s arm to get him out of the way of the passing cars as both men became mesmerized by the terrifically fast approach of the matte black aircraft. No more than five feet from the ground, it closed the distance like a bullet train.

  Movement in the foreground grabbed Frank’s attention from the oncoming doom. It was a man, a woman and two children. Campanelli knew from the man’s picture that this was Donald Arness, the Chicago alderman from the second district and the subject of their stakeout. Fearing for their lives, Frank sprinted forward only to be passed as if standing still by the more athletic Williams.

  The two police cars came to a halt not far from the open mechanic’s shop. The oncoming helicopter tilted backwards in an effort to stop. For several, torturously elongated seconds, Frank knew that the craft was going to collide with the police cars unless it gained altitude. Sparks shot up from the machine’s tail as it scraped the pavement, but kept coming.

  Arness grabbed up his small daughter as his wife wrapped her arms around their son, a boy of twelve. Though the family hunkered down from the violent approach of the helicopter, they did not make any move to get out of the way.

  Despite any feeling of heroics, Williams skidded to a halt, realizing that, whatever happened, it was in the hands of the helicopter’s pilot. Campanelli came to an awkward stop behind him.

  The officers of the two cars jumped out of them with their assault rifles at the ready. None fired, but they pointed the weapons at the oncoming threat from behind open car doors.

  Miraculously, the aircraft managed to slow and a side door swung open. The interior was lit with a pale red light. The family of four bolted toward the opening as a unit, as if it were practiced. The helicopter swallowed them up, never completely coming to a hover.

  “Hold fire!” Campanelli ordered as two more cruisers approached from the south.

  With a sudden upsurge of the aircraft’s turbofan engines, it increased its altitude with sudden efficiency. Tilting forward, it appeared bull-like, taunting the matadors in front of it as it regained speed. With great blasts of air trapped between buildings, the men in front of the beast were forced to cover their faces. The uniformed officers fought to keep the car doors open. The driver of one simply dove back inside his car and let the door slam shut behind him.

  With the scene washed out by the blue and white lights of the squad cars, it was hard to get a good description of the aircraft. The lights could do nothing to help define its shape as the monster flew over the cars by the grace of a half meter. In seconds, it was past them all, dedicated to gathering speed rather than height. Campanelli shifted his vision from day to night modes, squinting against the assaulting police lights and the obstruction of night. All he could determine for sure was that the helicopter was an old design which utilized a tail rotor. It was painted a deep, unreflective black and whoever was flying it, knew what he was doing.

  It turned west in a hard bank once it cleared the row of hangars, then it was gone.

  “Whew,” one of the uniformed officers breathed as he adjusted his helmet and stood. His driver exited the car and looked about the sky uselessly.

  Frank was about to ask everyone if they were all right when shouting erupted from the direction of the mechanic’s shop. A sergeant from Unit Thirty-Three and his partner swarmed the man Frank had identified as Michael Trane. The mechanic, appearing bewildered over what had just happened, placed his hands on his head as he was ordered. Campanelli cussed quite clearly and hurried to the shop with Williams close behind.

  “Hold it! Hold it, sergeant!” Campanelli shouted.

  “Sir?!” the excited policeman called back, confused.

  “It’s all right,” Frank insisted with a wave of his hand. “Let’s talk to Mister Trane before we run him in, okay?”

  The sergeant said nothing but drew away nonetheless. He and his partner remained close enough to hear the conversation.

  “Michael Trane, I’m Detective Campanelli, CPD, Sentinel Division,” Frank introduced, not bothering to mention that he was on loan from Homicide. “This is Detective Williams.”

  The three men shook hands. Frank routinely did this to help keep people at ease, though it often ended up in an arrest.

  “What in the hell
just happened?” Trane asked without a smile. His eyes were wide as he looked about his shop. Papers, folders, torn pages from catalogs and empty food and drink containers had been tossed about by windstorm generated by the helicopter blades. The man’s bright blue eyes were wide and his long brown hair was wind-blown, sticking out in a multitude of directions. “Wait, you said ‘Sentinel’?”

  “That’s right,” Frank confirmed.

  “Isn’t that the division in charge of enforcing the anti-migration thing?”

  “Right again.”

  “So those people were, uh…”

  Frank halted for a moment, trying to recall the rhetoric used in the ‘Sentinel’ program training material. At times, they were referred to as ‘escapees’, which really bothered Campanelli. Earth was not a prison, after all. Was it?

  “Human Traffic, Mister Trane,” Williams supplied for him.

  “Right,” the mechanic said with a neutral nod.

  “So, you didn’t know they were inside that hangar?” Campanelli took up.

  “No, no I didn’t. I saw your car, though. I figured something was up.”

  “If you knew that the police were here, why didn’t you close up?”

  “Well,” Trane stammered as he searched for an answer, “I knew that whatever it was, it couldn’t have anything to do with me and I have work to do.”

  “Is that why you’re open so late, Mister Trane?” Frank asked as he shuffled across the paper-strewn floor.

  “I’m trying to get this project done for the boss before I go on vacation with my wife and son.”

  “You don’t own the place?” Williams asked.

  “No…not yet. I want to buy it. That’s the plan, anyway.”

  “So, you have no aspiration to take your family to Alethea?” Campanelli asked and studied the man’s face closely.

  “Oh, no,” he answered with conviction.

  “Why not?” Frank followed up and stepped closer to the man.

  “Well, I…just don’t wanna go,” Michael answered, making his statement sound like a question.

  “You don’t convince me.”

  Trane shifted his weight from one foot to another. “I don’t know what to say, detective. My family and I don’t want to go. That’s all.”