by John L. Work
“And then the song became a sigh,
Forevermore became good-bye,
But you remain in my heart, so…”
When he awoke suddenly, she was gone, but the memory of his dream was not. It stayed with him all day Sunday. She didn’t answer her phone. He left another message.
60
Monday morning came and it was time to go to New Zealand. He hated going to the Denver airport. The old Stapleton Air Field had been so easy and convenient. He got himself out of bed at three thirty – far too early to awaken Janet with a goodbye phone call. First there was the endless drive to get to the terminal, which seemed like it was located out near the Kansas border. You thought you were there from the initial appearance of the place on the left as you came from the north on Tower Road, or straight ahead if you came from the west on Pena Boulevard, but it took another fifteen minutes to actually arrive. Welch parked in the outer lot and walked a good quarter mile to the building, then rode an elevator up a few floors to get into the terminal. He had to walk about a hundred yards to his left in order to find his ticket counter and check in. Then there was another hike down a hallway to the escalators that took him back downstairs through the security checkpoints, which took another twenty minutes or so. There was more walking to get to the electrically powered underground trains that carried passengers to and from the concourses. Then it was up another escalator to finally arrive at the hallway to the plane gates. Welch had never gotten on a flight that was parked nearest to the train station. He inevitably had to do a forced march of another quarter mile or so to get to the very last gate.
The connecting flight was late arriving and there was a delay in servicing the plane for the two hour hop to Los Angeles. Cops weren’t allowed to carry their firearms on planes, so he’d left his revolver, handcuffs and extra ammunition locked in the trunk of his unmarked sheriff’s car. He picked up a Joseph Wambaugh novel at the nearest news stand and sat down to read. Welch loved Wambaugh books. Joe wrote about funny guys that wear badges and navy blue uniforms, like Roscoe Rules and Spermwhale Whalen in The Choir Boys. He also wrote about the real life tragedy that the cops face every day.
He took off his coat and sipped a cup of terribly bitter airport coffee as he read. After about thirty minutes, someone keyed the public address system and the section by section loading order was announced for his flight. He put his book away, then moved toward the gate to present his boarding pass and photo ID. The flight attendant smiled as he showed her his driver’s license and he moved into the tunnel that led to his plane. He found his way to the correct seat, put his coat up inside the overhead bin and sat down next to the window to resume his reading.
He was seated next to a very talkative college kid who was on her way back to U.S.C. for midterm exams. She was wearing very low cut jeans and one of those high riding shirts that showed her lower belly. The term muffin top came to his mind. She told him in one of those high pitched, edgy, sing song valley girl voices that she was really irritated because First Class had already been sold out when her parents booked her return flight and now she wouldn’t get a hot meal and the seats were so close together in the Coach section that she couldn’t stretch out her legs and they sometimes cramped on her and she was really tired from the big party and probably wouldn’t be able to sleep very well during the flight because she hated being in the Coach section. Then she took a breath to continue complaining.
Amused by her nineteen year old impetuousness, Welch didn’t have much trouble getting her to tell him about her life and her world view. He didn’t argue with her or comment on anything she said – he just listened to her. Her parents had flown her home to Cherry Creek from college for the weekend and thrown her a big birthday party, where they’d given her a brand new pair of skis and boots – to go with her brand new Mercedes Benz and a two week Christmas vacation skiing trip to Switzerland. She was majoring in media communications with a political science and sociology minor. She wanted to be a television broadcast journalist. She hated George Bush and knew that he stole the 2000 election from Al Gore, who actually won and should have been sworn in. She said that the United States probably deserved the 9/11 attacks because of all its meddling Middle Eastern policies and its support of Israel.
She believed that the American people needed to show more tolerance for Islam, and be made to understand that Muslims are good people with a right to practice their religious freedoms, just like anyone else in the country. She said that the true Islam is a religion of peace and the extreme ones had stolen the real Islam from the peaceful ones. And the extreme ones were making them all look really, really, totally bad by like doing things that were not part of the genuine Islam and that terrorism had absolutely nothing to do with the real religion. Even George Bush had said that right after 9/11 – and that was the one thing she agreed with him on.
She thought that Bill Clinton was one of the greatest presidents ever and that Monica Lewinsky was a skanky whorish slut. She didn’t think it was such a big deal that he lied under oath about Monica blowing him in the Oval Office or the broom closet or wherever because, after all, it was just about his private life – it had nothing to do with his actual job.
She was sure that the planet was warming up and would soon be totally ruined from all the excessive heat and the ice melting – and the polar bears would soon be extinct. All of this was caused by people, of course, mostly by Americans because they consume so many natural resources and produce so much greenhouse gas. She’d read a lot of books and taken college classes about all of this stuff and thought it was a shame that the United States was ruining the environment and everything else for the rest of the world.
She thought that it would be a good idea for American people to stop driving cars altogether and start using mass transit like they do in Chicago. And she was an avid recycler. Her father was a tort lawyer who represented people who were injured in car accidents and suffered from medical malpractice by crooked doctors. He was a personal friend of Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon and she’d actually met both of them at a political fundraiser for the Democrats. It had been so totally cool, she said, in that stupor inducing sing song voice.
After talking to Welch about herself for forty minutes or so, she asked him one question – what kind of work did he do? He told her he was a detective for a Colorado sheriff’s office. Without saying another word, she looked at him as if she’d just chugged a twelve ounce tumbler of syrup of ipecac. Then she turned away and went directly to sleep. The rest of the flight to Los Angeles was pretty uneventful.
61
He arrived in Auckland late Tuesday evening. Detective Chief Inspector Harold Carlyn met him at the customs gate and they shook hands. On the way to his hotel, Carlyn explained how everything was supposed to work in the next few days.
“I’ve arranged for you to meet with our Chief of Detectives, Thomas Winston. He’s going to have lunch with you tomorrow and go through all the arrangements that were made between your prosecutors and our government. I’ll have a day with you and you can see some of the sights, since your Sheila isn’t supposed to arrive until Thursday. I think you’ll enjoy your stay, but right now you’re probably a little jet-lagged, right?”
“Sheila?’
Carlyn laughed. “It’s our word for a lady, mate – a woman. We call ‘em Sheilas.”
Welch had a splitting jet lag headache and he answered, “Oh, I see. What a coincidence that is. Jet lag doesn’t even begin to describe it. I feel like my head is full of warm cotton – and at the same time it hurts like hell.”
“I’ve got it, mate. No worries, though – you’ll soon be at your hotel room, hitting a nice soft pillow and some clean sheets.”
Welch, said, “I’m looking forward to that, believe me.”
It took about thirty minutes to get to the hotel. Welch thanked Carlyn, excused himself and shook hands again. The New Zealander perfectly understood how poorly the American must be feeling from the long plane flight. It us
ually took about one good night’s sleep to shake the jet lag and begin to feel like a human being once again.
Welch made his way to the room, took a long, hot shower, got into some clean boxers, pulled the covers down on his king sized bed and fell immediately into a dreamless sleep.
62
His phone rang at eight o’clock in the morning. It was Carlyn.
“G’day, mate. How are you this morning? Better?”
“Yes, thank you. What time is it?”
“It’s eight, straight up.”
“What time will you pick me up?”
“I’ll be there at half past ten.”
“Wonderful. See you at ten-thirty.”
“Right, then.”
Welch got himself out of the bed, made a cup of coffee and climbed back into that wonderful shower. After shaving and brushing his teeth, he pulled on a set of clean clothes and made his way down to the hotel restaurant. He was starving. He ordered up bacon, eggs and toast – the standard breakfast – with hot tea to drink. Then he perused an Auckland newspaper to see what was going on here at the bottom half of the world. He read the paper from front page to back, walked to the elevator and went back up to his room. He opened his suitcase, withdrew a small satchel, a note pad and some documents he’d brought with him. At ten twenty-five his phone rang again. Carlyn was down in the lobby. It was time to go meet the New Zealand detective honcho who was going to have his men arrest Samantha Newsom for First Degree Murder.
63
Carlyn ushered him into Chief of Detectives Thomas Winston’s office at precisely eleven o’clock a.m. Winston stood and walked from behind a very large desk. He extended a very large right hand and took Welch’s with a grip of iron. He was a big man, graying at the temples, with broad shoulders and, like so many cops, stood about six feet tall. His smile revealed a mouth full of straight white teeth and a square chin. His wide set eyes were steel blue and their gaze was intense as he regarded the American.
“Welcome to New Zealand, Detective Welch. I hope you had a good night’s rest.”
“Thank you, sir. Yes, I did sleep well. And I was very grateful for it after the long flight.”
“Wonderful. We’ll have something to eat and then I’d like to hear about your case. I’ve made arrangements for five of my best men to provide assistance to you in arresting your defendant. We’ll go to the airport later and walk through it together to make sure that all goes according to plan when she arrives. I’ve been looking over the urgent warrant and I know it’s a murder, but as you probably know already, arrest warrants are rather short on details, so I’m most anxious to know everything. I spend all my time reading reports these days and I seldom get to hear first hand from an investigating detective, especially in a case out of the States. We’ll do everything in our power to see that she’s brought to justice.”
“Thank you, again, sir. I’m most grateful for your cooperation and assistance.”
Welch, Carlyn and Winston left the building and rode with the Inspector’s driver to a quiet restaurant, where they dined on New Zealand ground beef meat pie. Welch was curious to try some native local cuisine and not the American fast foods that have inundated the South Pacific lands. They finished it all off with a meringue pavlova, topped with fruit and whipped cream.
Winston was a brilliant conversationalist. He talked about his family, his three children and his travels – which included several trips into the United States for training seminars at the F.B.I. Academy in Quantico, Virginia. There was no pretense about the man. He spoke to his American guest in a straight forward manner, and not down to him. Welch enjoyed his company immensely. In turn, the American described the part of the United States from whence he came, in particular the Rocky Mountains. Winston had never been there and listened intently. Then Welch spoke of his grown children and new grandson.
They had tea with dessert and after the meal was finished, the Chief of Detectives asked about Welch’s murder investigation. The American took another sip and began. He told the entire story without interruption from either man. It took about thirty minutes to describe the entire sequence of events, beginning with Sheila McCowell’s divorce from her well-to-do husband that culminated with her kidnapping and brutal murder. He moved on to the discovery of the remains of Jimmie Slaikovitch’s body in the mountains, how the police matched his DNA with the tissue found beneath Sheila’s nails during the autopsy, and lastly related the circumstances of Jim McCowell’s killing in Chicago. As he moved through the deadly spider’s web woven by Marnie McCowell and Samantha Newsom, both Carlyn and Winston stared at him, ignoring their tea as it grew cool in the cups.
“Christ, man, you should write a book about this one. What do you think, Carlyn?”
“I agree. I’ve never heard one quite like this. That Slaikovitch was a real drop-kick.”
“Drop-kick?”
“A very stupid man, as you Yanks would say. A chump.”
Welch went on, “I see. I never have, either. It’s been a tough road. I must tell you I was at a loss when it all started. We got a terrific break when that bear dug up Slaikovitch’s body – and again when the young man backed into Samantha’s car at O’Hare Airport. I wouldn’t even want to guess at the odds of that happening. Otherwise, I have no idea how we could have gotten this far with it, at this stage of the game. I suppose eventually someone would’ve noticed how long the car was parked there and begun an investigation into why no one came back to retrieve it, but that could’ve been so far down the road that both Marnie and Samantha would be long gone. When Stanley’s team got their hands on that car and he called Marnie to request an interview, she’d pretty well already decided to come clean and talk to us. But it’s also a possibility that without that phone call from Stanley that let her know the cops had figured it all out, her attorney might’ve convinced her to keep quiet. Who knows? She might’ve changed her mind and just gone on to Samoa. Things would’ve turned out quite differently, then.”
“Indeed”, said Carlyn.
Winston asked, ‘Well, then, are you ready for another go at the airport and we’ll show you how we’d like to nick this lady?”
Welch was puzzled by that question and it showed on his face.
Winston laughed. “It’s originally an English term. The bobbies call it that. What you Americans know as a police station is known by the word nick in the UK police jargon. So, when they arrest someone, they say we’re going to nick him.”
Welch smiled. “I understand now. Yes, sir, I’m ready.”
“Good, then. We’ll get on our way.”
64
The plan was for the six plain clothes officers, including Welch, to be spread throughout the area around the gate when the passengers began to deplane. Welch had brought along color photocopies of Sammie’s Colorado Department of Revenue Driver’s License photo and given it to each of the detectives who was assigned to make the arrest. They took directions from Carlyn, who placed them where they’d be on the following morning. They were large men, looked like they were very strong and able to win a fight in a hurry. They didn’t smile and concentrated completely on what Carlyn told them.
Sammie’s flight was scheduled to arrive at the extreme south gate of the “A” western concourse in the international terminal. It was a very long walk from there to the baggage claim area and customs, so, Carlyn had decided to nab her right as she walked from the plane through the gate. He didn’t want to risk losing her in a crowd, perhaps as she stepped into a rest room, and had an opportunity to change clothes or into a different colored wig. He’d paid close attention to the narrative of the McCowell murder at O’Hare and knew that this lady could disguise herself pretty well. Welch was to stand near a pillar about thirty feet from the disembarking passenger entrance into the terminal – and directly in front of it.
From his vantage point he could see every passenger who walked from the tunnel into the open concourse and would signal the others when he spotted her. He knew that her
hair color might be different from that in the photo, or she might be wearing sunglasses and a hat – but he was pretty sure he’d be able to spot her. She’d be the one with the beautiful face, great legs and well-muscled arms. There was no question in his mind – Samantha Newsom would stand out from the rest of the crowd by virtue of her exceptional beauty and incredible athletic body. Once he gave the signal, all the other detectives would surround her and identify themselves – from there it should be pretty easy. They would escort her quickly from the arrival gate to a waiting car right outside on the tarmac, at the entrance to the terminal.