by Dan Arnold
“My fee structure is simple, Mr. Simpson. I charge $450.00 per day, plus expenses. My day rate does not imply that I will spend all day, every day, on your case. I have other clients. I will provide you with a written account of my efforts and findings. I will also invoice you and provide receipts for the expenses.”
“No, I don’t need any written records. Walter will give you $5,000.00 as a retainer. That should cover one week’s worth of work and expenses. I probably won’t see you again, after today. Walter will check in with you from time to time, you can let him know your progress. Do we have a deal?”
I hesitated. Aside from his aggressive approach, there was something about all of this that rubbed me the wrong way.
“Mr. Simpson, how should I say this… there might be something that comes up, which you and I need to discuss. That discussion might not need to include your personal assistant. No offense, Walter.”
Walter looked sort of surprised.
I saw the wheels turning in Mr. Simpson’s head.
“Yeah, well I don’t anticipate that happening. But in case it does, Walter will give you my private number. Don’t call me unless it’s damned important. Now then, is it a deal or no deal?” He held out his hand.
I shook it.
“Good. Let’s get some lunch,” Mr. Simpson said.
To my surprise, we walked right across the hall, to another corner room with a spectacular view of the city. This space was appointed as a banquet area. There were buffet tables with a variety of delicacies from breads to meats, side dishes, even desserts. The dining table had a sparkling white table cloth with an elaborate, low, arrangement of fresh flowers. There were crystal goblets, wine glasses, and silverware, even linen napkins.
“Grab you a plate, Mr. Tucker. James will be here in a moment to get your drink order. I’d try that blackened prime rib, if I was you.”
We enjoyed a delightful lunch. We were joined by a couple of other Simpson Oil and Gas employees, to whom I was introduced simply as, Mr. Tucker. I was pretty much ignored, as the conversation shifted from business trivialities to current NFL football highlights. Evidently, Mr. Simpson was a Dallas Cowboys fan.
After lunch, Walter took me to his office, where he handed me a large manila envelope, with $5,000.00 in cash in it. It held fifty, one hundred dollar bills, bundled into five stacks, with ten bills in each stack, the very definition of a tidy sum. He also handed me a business card for Simpson Oil and Gas, with no personalized name on it. Two phone numbers were hand printed on the back.
“The top number is my personal cell phone. The bottom number is Mr. Simpson’s private line. Don’t call him, unless I tell you that you can.”
I figured I would make my own decisions about who I called and when.
He walked me to the elevator.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Tucker, keep me informed. I’ll be seeing you.” He walked away.
As the elevator doors were closing, I looked over at the receptionist.
She gave me a dazzling smile.
Three
My three o’clock appointment was going to be unpleasant, at best. I would rather have had an appointment for a root canal, or even a colonoscopy. This meeting was likely to be more painful and uncomfortable than either of those, on several levels.
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Winslow, ‘Bob and Sandy’, wanted me to investigate the disappearance of their 10 year old daughter, Victoria.
I had seen the story on the news.
Mrs. Winslow had left her daughter in the car, doing her homework, while she went into the supermarket. When she came out with the groceries, Victoria was gone. At first Sandy figured Victoria (she hated to be called Vicky) had just followed her into the store, so she went looking for her. She had the store manager page her. The store manager sent employees searching for her. Sandy started to come unglued and became hysterical. The manager called the police.
The police determined Victoria was not in the store, her mother’s car, or the parking lot. They reviewed the video tape from the surveillance cameras.
The parking lot cameras had recorded an average-sized man, in a hoodie sweatshirt with the hood pulled up, wandering through the parking lot, kind of looking under cars near Sandy’s vehicle. He was seen approaching Sandy’s car and engaging Victoria in conversation.
Victoria got out of the car and went with the man to look under other cars. They disappeared from view. Neither Sandy nor Bob (who had been called in from work), had any idea who the man in the video images might be.
After the search of the surrounding neighborhoods by the police, friends, and volunteers, after all the usual investigation and interviews of known offenders, after grilling members of the family and all the friends of the family, even after the video tape was shown on the local and national news channels, the police had nothing.
My friend, Detective Sergeant Tony Escalante of the Tyler PD, had told the family, I might be able to help.
It had been nearly a week since the little girl went missing.
“I know Tony Escalante recommended me to you, but the police have done a very thorough investigation. I don’t want to take y’all’s money and end up telling you the same thing they did. I’m so sorry, but in a case like this, there is seldom a happy ending. We just don’t have any real leads to follow,” I said.
“I don’t care what it costs. We’ll mortgage the house. We have to know what has happened to our little girl,” Bob said.
Sandy just sat there, crying.
“I understand completely, but I don’t want to benefit from your tragedy. I’ll do what I can. I’ll do some investigating and I’ll pray for you, and for her. I can’t make any promises beyond that. In the meantime, it would probably be best, if you just concentrate on remembering Victoria as happy and healthy. I’ll give you the name of my pastor; he’s excellent at counseling folks in a crisis.”
“We want you to help us find our daughter, please help us,” Sandy Winslow sobbed.
“We’ll pay you a retainer,” Bob added.
I held up my hands.
“Please, Mr. Winslow, I don’t want your money. I told you, I’ll do what I can, but I can’t promise you anything.”
“Business is business.” Bob said, as he wrote out a check. “This is to secure your services, not as payment for anything certain. Maybe having to earn the money will provide additional motivation.”
He handed me the check. It was made out to me, for one thousand dollars.
I said thank you, and put it in my pocket. I had no intention of ever cashing it.
The next morning, Tony called me.
“Did you take that job for Mr. and Mrs. Winslow?”
“Not exactly, Tony. I told them I would look into it, but there is very little chance I can help.”
“Can you shoot this evening?”
I knew by “shoot,” he meant meet him at the shooting range, where we practiced.
“OK. I’ll meet you there.”
When I entered the indoor range, Tony was already set up in a shooting lane. He had reserved the next station for me. There was no one else there.
When I arrived at Tony’s shooting station, he looked grim.
“Hey, J.W., how’s it going?”
“Super, how are you?”
“I have good days and bad days.”
I nodded, and then I asked him.
“Have you made any progress on the missing child case?”
He shook his head.
“Not really, but now we have this.”
He reached into a pocket inside his jacket and removed a plastic sleeve, with a Polaroid photo in it.
“This morning we got a call from a citizen at the supermarket where the Winslow girl disappeared. We sent a uniform over there, and this is what the person found lying in the parking lot.”
He passed me the plastic sleeve.
“We checked out the citizen and she’s clean. We ran the photo for prints and did a battery of tests. The lady who found the phot
o has her prints on it, and there are other partials.”
I looked at the picture. Then I started studying it.
“Were any of the partials enough to get a match?”
“Apparently not, we thought maybe so, but not one of them was complete enough. We didn’t get a hit from any of the data bases.”
“I didn’t know you could still get Polaroid film. How old is it? How long do you think it may have been lying out there?”
“The techs say the picture is only a couple of days old. It wasn’t out in the elements for long. It hadn’t been run over, and it wasn’t blown into the parking lot by the wind. It hasn’t been faded by the sun. They think it was probably dropped there last night or this morning.”
“… Nothing on the surveillance cameras?” I asked.
He shook his head, as his only response.
“Why are you showing this to me?”
“We’ve done everything we can do with it. It’s just information, another dead end.”
I took a long slow breath. I wished he hadn’t phrased it that way.
“Have you tried to get a match on the car’s make, model and year?”
He nodded and said, “We haven’t been able to get anything firm. It’s probably American, maybe a nineties vintage, maybe newer, maybe not - like I said, nothing for sure. I’ll ask the FBI if they can identify it from the photograph.” He shrugged.
“Have you shown this to the Winslow’s yet?”
“I don’t want to, but I’m supposed to. You know, to get a positive ID. Matches the description and the other photos they provided us exactly, though.”
“What do you know about the other one?”
“Hard to tell from the photo, we might have a lead, but I can’t discuss it with you, yet.”
“As disturbing as this is, it’s kind of encouraging at the same time.”
“How’s that, J.W.?”
“Victoria was taken nearly a week ago. The picture was probably dropped here deliberately. The perp may still be in the area.”
He nodded.
“Yeah, but only you could see something positive in that.”
“There’s something else even more significant.”
“What’s that?”
I handed the Polaroid back to Tony
“These kids were both alive when this picture was taken.”
The photo showed two children lying in the trunk of a car. They were bound and had been gagged with duct tape.
From the pictures I had seen and the video of the abduction, I could see the girl was clearly Victoria Winslow. The boy was younger and smaller than Victoria. She was lying in front of him, partly obscuring him. The duct tape over his mouth covered most of the whole lower half of his face.
I felt the old anger at the evil permeating and perverting humanity and poisoning this world. It helped me focus on my shooting. I chose my favourite .45 and set the target at fifteen yards. Tony was shooting his service Sig .40. He started at fifteen yards also.
We both fired fifty rounds. We both shot well.
Out in the parking lot, I looked at Tony and said, “We both know that’s Victoria Winslow in the photo, right?”
He nodded silently in response.
“Do you really have to show the picture to the Winslow family?”
Tony opened the trunk of his car to put his gun bag into it. We both stood there, looking into the empty trunk.
“No,” he said. “I don’t believe I will.”
Four
Ted Simpson had inherited his interest in Simpson Oil and Gas from his father, Gus Simpson. Ted’s father had likewise inherited his father’s oil and gas interests. All three generations had managed the business with ruthless precision, making Simpson Oil and Gas the leading independent producer in North America. Simpson Oil and Gas, Ted in particular, had recognized the value of emerging technologies, and they led the way in the most innovative and effective horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing, completions and production techniques.
At one point, by acquiring millions of acres of leasehold in several states, they managed to corner the market on nearly every major natural gas play in North America.
Unfortunately, Ted had over-extended his credit and his investor’s money in the process. He had almost singlehandedly eliminated the formerly normal cyclic supply shortages. Now there was a glut of available natural gas. The storage facilities were flooded, but because demand had not increased, the market price of natural gas had plummeted.
Ted was forced to sell off much of their land holdings in leases, in several states. He had to sell some of the corporate stock as well. His timing was excellent and he saved the company, putting it back on secure and profitable footing.
Many of the assets were sold to foreign investors, most notably investors from China and Saudi Arabia. This made him unpopular with some folks, but probably would not be a deal killer for his election dreams.
I could find nothing in his business life that would be seen as scandalous.
Personally, he had an unpleasant reputation for putting money ahead of the people in his life. For him, turning a tidy profit came before any other consideration. At worst he appeared to be greedy to a fault. He lived for the profit. Usually, his shareholders benefitted from this mind set. His family and employees did not. Still, it was nothing that would pose a serious threat to an election campaign.
Politically, he had contributed money to candidates running in both parties. He was said to be a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. He could afford to finance his own campaign, but he had long standing connections with powerful people he could use for fund raising. He was very good at using people. If an election could be bought, he would buy it.
I was thinking about these things, when the phone rang.
“Mr. Tucker, this is Walter Farley. I was wondering if you’ve made any progress in your enquiries.”
“I’ve done some research into Mr. Simpson’s business history and practices.”
“I see. I’d like to hear your thoughts on what you’ve found. May I come by your office?”
“Certainly, Mr. Farley, when would you like to make an appointment?”
“Well… now - right now. In fact, I’ll be there in a minute.”
I didn’t like it.
“No, wait, that…” He had hung up.
That did it. I realized it was time to get a secretary. I needed somebody to protect me from free-roaming jackasses.
“… So, to sum up, there is nothing scandalous or clearly egregious in his business history or practices. I’d say he is going to have a hard time selling the idea he is both a social progressive and a fiscal conservative. You can’t be supportive of liberal social programs, and at the same time, deny them funding.” I concluded.
“We really aren’t interested in your political opinion, Mr. Tucker,” Walter said. “We hired you to investigate whether or not there’s anything Mr. Simpson’s enemies might be able to use against him.”
“I had to start somewhere. I chose to explore his business life, first. I’ll get into other areas as I go along. You are aware Mr. Simpson represents ‘Big Oil’ in the minds of many average Texas voters? If there was something Simpson Oil and Gas had done and covered up, I needed to find out. Even a serious environmental issue could kill his political aspirations.”
“I see your point. Are you confident you have eliminated those concerns?”
I nodded and replied, “Yep, there’s nothing there that could be used to do any serious harm to him or his campaign. Y’all are already addressing the environmental issues and concerns associated with hydraulic fracturing. I’m aware certain celebrities have protested and chained themselves to trees, but the Texas Railroad Commission has no beef with Simpson Oil and Gas, and the EPA hasn’t been able to prove any of the claims about contaminated well water. There are numerous studies showing methane contamination has occurred often throughout history, and continues to occur naturally, drilling or no drilling. It appea
rs the incidents that actually have been directly linked to drilling are about casing issues in the vertical bores, unrelated to hydraulic fracturing. The stories do get a lot of media attention though, don’t they?”
He shook his head.
“Again, that’s not your concern. Move on. What will your investigative skills be applied to next?”
Now, I found his attitude… unacceptable.
Opening my desk drawer, I took out the big manila envelope full of money.
Walter appeared to have a smirk on his face.
I opened the envelope and looked inside.
“Ok. It’s all still here.” I observed.
Looking over at Walter, I tossed the whole thing in his lap.
Evidently my unexpected move made Walter angry. His face turned beet-red.
“There’s your money, Walter. Since I haven’t performed to your exacting standards, you can get someone else to handle the job.”
I stood up, to show Walter to the door.
“Now hold on, Mr. Tucker. We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. There’s no need for you to be petty about this.”
“Be careful, Walter. I don’t like to be insulted, especially while I’m standing in my own office.”
He nodded, but stayed seated.
“Very well, I apologize. I didn’t intend any insult. Can we start over? I fear I’ve managed this badly.” He said.
“That’s exactly the point, Walter. If you want to manage my work, you’ll have to give better directions. No, on second thought, I don’t care to have you manage my work, at all. Take the money back to Mr. Simpson, and tell him that for me.”
Walter was not happy. I could see he was working hard at trying to maintain his temper, his composure and his dignity.