by Irving Munro
“It’s the same reason we were called Spirit Riders. Buzz explained that Muguara meant Spirit Talker and he would sit off on his own in the desert at night and stare up into the stars and talk with his ancestors. Our team got the reputation that our success in engaging with the enemy and finding the scud missile sites was because Buzz talked to the spirits and they guided us in our work. When other teams would try to wind us up with talk of spirit guidance, Buzz would just smile and walk away. Good man, Buzz!”
“I read about the Native Indians in World War II who communicated with each other using a code based on the Navajo language. I also saw the movie that was made about them called Wind Talkers,” said Bill.
“Buzz was nothing like that. The only conversation he had in his native language was with dead people, the spirits of his ancestors.”
“And Joe Nichol ever hear anything about him?”
“Another pit bull was Joe! He was Scots/Irish from Boston. Haven’t kept in touch with him either. He’s probably breaking heads in some Irish bar in Boston, and good luck to him.”
That was all Bill learned from Martin Peters. He ended the call and there were no niceties at the end, no offer to “call again if you need more information.”
Bill concluded that Martin would probably not even take another call. He wanted to be left alone with his memories. He had taken this one call because his ex-commanding officer had made a specific request.
Bill sat back in his home office and stared at the ceiling. There were originally six members of the Spirit Riders and two were now dead. One lived in Britain, one in Australia and the other two, who knows? They could be living somewhere in the U.S. or elsewhere or they could be dead also. One of them, a First Nation Native Indian, could have met his demise on a cold night at Whispering Hollow on the shores of Lake Travis.
Chapter 14: It’s Mike Muguara
“So why would he use the name Raul Hernandez?” asked Tommy.
They were all back in the conference room for the morning briefing.
“I don’t know, Tommy, it might have been the first name that popped into his head when Martha Goldman asked him for his name, or it might have been pre-planned for some reason that he chose to use the name of a fallen comrade as a cover. Don’t know, but we need to find out. I think we should write up on the board RAUL HERNANDEZ - COVER NAME?”
“So let’s hypothesize that the deceased is this Mike Muguara. We still don’t know why he bought new clothes in Houston with cash. Who walks around with $4,000 in cash on them? We’ve also made no progress on the BMW connection. Any ideas?” said Tommy.
“I think we need to check out the bigwig banker connection that Martin Peters made reference to,” said Marie. “He could have been saying he was the son of a banker for effect, but as Martin said there was no room for egos on that team, so why say something like that unless it was true? I can take that one if y’all are in agreement. I have friends in Houston and I can go down there and see if I can find a link.”
“Sounds like a good plan, Marie,” said Tommy. “So let’s write on the board HOUSTON BANKER?”
“I need to work on the BMW connection,” said Bill. “I need to look at other rental companies. He may not have rented it at all, he may have bought it, and if so, we have no idea how old it is, what model, what color, nothing to go on, really. We need to catch a break or this could end up as another dead end.”
“Let me split the work with you on the car rental companies. That sounds like a two-man job dad.”
~
While Tommy and Bill went off to try and track down the BMW, Marie accessed the LinkedIn business networking service on the Internet. She started with the “Find People” search and then refined that search by using filters. She keyed in Banking, Investment Banking, Houston, and VP and got twenty-three hits. She started calling.
The first three calls were dead ends. The fourth call was to a Yolanda P. Hernandez, vice president and head of commercial operations for Crocker Bank.
“Ms. Hernandez’ office.”
“This is Detective Marie Mason of the Travis County Police Department. May I speak with Ms. Hernandez, please?”
“She is in a meeting right now with clients. Is it urgent, Detective Mason, or can she return your call later today?”
“Are you her personal assistant?”
“Yes I am, Detective.”
“Then yes, please have her call me back when it’s convenient on 512-555-2929. What’s your name?’’
“My name is Sandra Bell.”
“Thank you, Sandra, just have Ms. Hernandez call me when she can.”
It was less than fifteen minutes later when Yolanda Hernandez called back.
“Yolanda Hernandez here, is this Detective Marie Mason?”
“Yes this is Marie Mason, and thanks for calling back, Ms. Hernandez.”
“My pleasure. How can I help you, Detective?”
“I am working a homicide case here in Austin, Ms. Hernandez, and I’m trying to track down information on a person who may have some connection to the case. May I ask, Ms. Hernandez, to your knowledge, is anyone related to you in the U.S. armed forces?”
There were a few seconds’ pause as if Yolanda Hernandez was trying to process the question.
“Our son Raul was in the Marine Corps and died in service to his country back in 2003.”
Marie had found the mother of Sargent Raul Hernandez, U.S. Marine Corps Force Recon!
~
“I found him!” announced Marie excitedly as she burst into the office where Bill and Tommy were working together trying to track down the BMW. “Well, more accurately, I found his mother,” said Marie, regaining her control.
“Whose mother?” said Tommy, genuinely confused about who she was referring to.
“Raul Hernandez’ mother, she is the bigwig banker, well, they both are, his parents, that is. She is in commercial banking and her husband, Julian Hernandez, is in investment banking. She said that they would be happy to help in any way.”
“Okay, now I understand, that’s fantastic, Marie. Our first real break,” said Tommy. “We should get down to Houston and interview them both and see what we can learn. Let’s try and get down there tomorrow. You and I should make the trip and Bill can continue on with the BMW search. Can you call Ms. Hernandez back right away and arrange a place and time to meet?”
“Will do,” said Marie, and she left the office to make the call.
“Do you want me to see if I can get you help on this BMW search, Dad?” said Tommy, concerned that he was leaving Bill with a mountain of research to get done.
“No, I can cope. You’ll only be gone a day,” responded Bill without looking up from his laptop.
~
Tommy and Marie set off for Houston bright and early the following morning. Yolanda Hernandez had invited them to her home and suggested that if they could get there by ten-thirty then she and her husband would work from home in the morning and be there to meet them.
The Houston rush hour traffic is even worse than Austin, and I10 into downtown Houston is a parking lot from six-thirty until late morning. Luckily the Hernandez home was north of the city in the Woodlands residential neighborhood and Tommy and Marie were able to take FM290 to the Sam Houston Tollway and then North on I45, avoiding I10 completely.
They arrived at the Hernandez home right on schedule. It was not a home, more like a palace, with a large circular driveway and huge bay windows. It was a clear symbol of the opulent lifestyle enjoyed by two successful financial executives. Yolanda had a buffet breakfast prepared by her staff ready for their arrival.
“Please come in,” said the maid as she brought them into the marble foyer. “Right this way. Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez have been expecting you.”
~
“Julian Hernandez, and this is my wife, Yolanda,” said Julian as he shook Tommy’s hand, completely ignoring Marie.
Some things never change, thought Marie.
Tommy introduced Mari
e.
“Pleased to meet you, Marie,” said Yolanda. “Your call yesterday came as a bit of a shock. Please help yourselves to coffee or tea, and there are some breakfast eats. I’m sure you must be hungry after your long drive.”
They each took some coffee and a plate from the huge buffet and they all sat around the adjoining dining table that had been prepared for the meeting. Julian had already taken his seat at the head of the table.
“So tell us what this is all about, please,” said Julian. “We will help as best we can, and you can rely on our complete fidelity in keeping the discussions we have here today in the strictest confidence.”
I guess that’s banker speak for we’ll keep our mouths shut, thought Marie.
Tommy and Marie laid out for Julian and Yolanda Hernandez all they knew.
“As you can see, we know very little,” said Tommy, summing up what he and Marie had just shared with them. “Anything you both can share about Raul would go a long way in helping us build out the picture,” he said, providing an opening for them to take over the conversation. To their surprise it was Yolanda who led the way.
“We were immensely proud of Raul,” said Yolanda as she began to tear up. “He was not academically bright, but he was a great athlete and an even greater person. He had a great soul. We could not have asked for a better son. He was our only child as due to complications during his birth, I was unable to have any more children.”
“It was after football practice one day when he came home and told us that he wanted to join the Marine Corps. There was no talk of any other arm of the military; it was the Marine Corps or nothing. He joined and went through basic training at Paris Island and then Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.”
“On completion of basic training he joined the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit and was deployed to the Balkans and then Somalia. His first sergeant recommended him for Force Recon. The rest of his career, until he was killed in Iraq in 2003, was in Special Forces.”
“I am sure that you have kept many photographs of him, Ms. Hernandez. May we see some of them?” asked Marie as she wiped the tears from her face.
“I can do a little better than a few photographs. Why don’t you both follow me.”
~
Yolanda and her husband led them upstairs and opened the doors to a huge entertainment room. Filling the walls on one side of the room where hundreds of photographs of young men in military fatigues. The photographs had been taken all over the world. The backdrop in some was palm trees and golden sands and in others the snow sparkled on majestic mountains. Finally, there were several photographs of six men in desert fatigues standing beside what looked like military dune buggies.
“I assume that this is Raul?” said Marie pointing to the young man standing closest to the buggy.
“Yes, that’s Raul, and to his immediate right is Mike Muguara. Seated in front are Joe Nichol, Martin Peters, Carl Conrad and Jimmy Martinelli. Jimmy and Raul were killed on the same day. The others made it home safely after the operation was completed.”
“Do you know much about Mike Muguara?” asked Tommy.
Yolanda immediately shot a glance at her husband and his lips tightened as he caught her look.
“Mike was Raul’s best friend in the world; they were inseparable. Mike took Raul’s death very badly and he was granted permission by his commanding officer to escort the casket containing Raul’s remains back to the U.S. He was there when Raul was put in the ground and he was first to sprinkle earth over the casket. He asked that he be allowed to stand over the grave for a few minutes before the final blessing from the priest. He said that he wanted to speak to the spirits to ask them to help Raul find his way home. Knowing his devout Indian beliefs, we allowed him to do that.”
“Why do you ask about Mike?” said Julian.
“Based on the evidence to date we have a strong suspicion that he is the victim of this horrendous crime, Mr. Hernandez, and having seen the photographs of him here today, I am now convinced that he is the deceased,” said Tommy.
The look on Julian Hernandez’ face suddenly changed. Tommy could feel the anger radiating from the man.
“Detective Ross, I tell you now, do not leave any stone unturned to find the murdering swine who did this! If there is any shortfall in budget to get the needed resources, you can count on me to personally fund that shortfall, you have my word on that. You get these people! You get them, please, detectives, and bring them to justice!”
As they drove back to Austin, Tommy turned to Marie and said, “We’re making progress, Marie. It’s one step at a time but we’re getting there.”
Chapter 15: Let’s get our ducks in a row
“Sounds like you had a very successful trip to Houston,” said Bill as he put down his morning coffee on the desk and hung up his coat in the corner of the office to dry. “It’s raining cats and dogs out there. I guess we’re lucky though. I saw in the news this morning that Buffalo is expecting seventy inches of snow in the next twenty-four hours. Those cold fronts come straight down from Canada, hit Lake Erie and then dump lake-effect snow everywhere. I was up there a few years ago and got caught in one of those things. Talk about whiteout, it was unbelievable.”
“I think we need to get back into the conference room and update the whiteboard with where we’re at, what we know and what we suspect. I think there are now multiple parallel lines of inquiry that we need to be running,” said Tommy as they headed off to the conference room.
~
“Okay, I’ll lead this exercise,” said Tommy. “We go through what we have already up on the board and we add other stuff as we go.”
1. Motive - No further forward in this.
2. Location - Doesn’t make sense. We feel that if we can discover the motive then the location might make sense, but right now the location seems really odd.
3. Identity - We now have a strong suspicion now that the victim is Mike Muguara.
4. Raul Hernandez - We now know for sure that he was not the victim. Why did the person buying the clothes (we are assuming Mike Muguara) use the name of his dead comrade and best friend?
5. The Spirit Riders - We know that two are dead, one lives in the UK, one lives in Australia, and we believe that Mike Muguara is now dead. That leaves one - Joe Nichol. We need to track him down and talk with him to close the loop and to see if he knows anything.
6. Follow the Money - This could be about the development around Whispering Hollow. We have no evidence to suggest this yet, but we should make inquiries to rule this in as motive or rule it out. Check out who is investing, including the Chinese. Let’s look for connections.
7. Check out Jimmy Rodriguez and his driver - The leather jacket!
8. Homeless in the Park - We need to visit the Whispering Hollow Park at night and see who is sleeping there and if they saw anything or heard anything.
9. White trucks seen by the Sessions couple leaving the scene.
10. The message found by the body - is there a handwriting clue?
11. The BMW - Still no progress here, we need to close the loop on this.
When they were done with the list Tommy led them through a list of actions and assigned responsibility:
1. Tommy to ask Chief Dunwoody to approach Special Forces Command and see if we can get information on Joe Nichol and Mike Muguara. We need social security numbers, last known address, etc. Suggest to the chief that he might enlist the help of the governor to get this information.
2. Marie will take the “Follow the Money” action. We might be able to get the help of Julian Hernandez on this given his investment banking connections, and/or his wife Yolanda.
3. Bill will take the BMW and the Whispering Hollow park site. Go out there at night and see if there are any homeless people who saw anything.
4. Bill and Tommy will pick up on the information from Special Forces Command if we get it and try to track down Joe Nichol.
5. The Victim - We are assuming that it’s Mike Muguara. We are als
o speculating that he perhaps came into Houston from Europe or Canada given his slip in the clothing store when he ordered in metric sizes. Where did he live? If we find out, we may need to go there and look at his accommodation; there may be clues there. We may get some help in this from Special Forces Command also.
“We also need to deal with Latisha Williams from the Austin Statesman. Marie, you get back to her on Monday as promised and set up a meeting for next week. I will come to that meeting with you and ask her for help in working through the lines of inquiry we have in return for her getting an exclusive when we eventually solve this thing,” said Tommy.
“For example she may also be helpful in getting us information on the investors behind the development. I would be surprise if she hasn’t been digging around in that. I did see an article written by her a few months ago about the Marina project, but I’m sure she’s been try to dig up mud to build a story about the other development in addition to the Marina.
“I’m pinning up on the wall beside the whiteboard several photographs that we were given by Yolanda Hernandez to help in our investigation.
“The Spirit Riders did great service for our country; let’s return the favor. We need to find out who killed one of their own and why.
“Let’s get to it!”
Chapter 16: Sixt Car Rental
The Thanksgiving holiday season was getting into full swing; most of the people the team needed to talk to were already off to spend time with family or using the holiday to get in a mini-vacation before the madness of Christmas.
Julian and Yolanda were off in the Caribbean somewhere. Governor Shaw was unavailable, although his aides would not share where he was exactly and the Special Forces Command were awaiting confirmation from the governor that the request for personal details of former Special Forces members being made by the Travis County Police Department was indeed crucial to a murder investigation.
Bill and Elaine were looking forward to having Tommy and Claire for Thanksgiving dinner. They had extended an invitation to Marie and Shelly, but they had made previous plans to spend the holiday with Shelly’s folks in Corpus Christi. Shelly’s mother was still quite frail following her illness earlier in the year, so Shelly decided that the best plan was that she and Marie would travel to Corpus and cook Thanksgiving dinner for Shelly’s parents.