Custos: Enemies Domestic

by Jake Aaron

  ____________

  Earlier outside the supermarket, before Inez’s entry to the store, Trench Coat saw a panhandler in rumpled military fatigues and an olive drab hoodie in the parking lot. “Hey, buddy,” he started, “want to earn free food and some cash? I’m with a marketing firm that tracks UPC codes on products, store pricing of items, and consumer preferences. Here’s $300 to buy the items of your choice. Buy at least one item from each aisle. Take your time. Whatever you don’t spend, I get back. I’ll have another $300 cash for you when you’re done. Meet me back here. Wear this hat that electronically picks up the UPC codes. It’s automatic; you don’t have to do anything special for the hat to do its job. I’ll just tell you one item you must buy for this project. Take this Sumoat lotion into the store to make sure you purchase the same item. Have a store clerk mark it on the way in so you won’t have to pay for this one. I need the cash register receipt from checkout, okay?

  “I have shopping to do inside for company research, too. The supermarket pays my firm for keeping our research low profile. When you see me in the store, don’t greet me. Act like you’ve never seen me before. After check out, wait ten minutes for me out here in case I haven’t finished my shopping. It’s in your best interest to spend as close to $300 as you can. Clear?”

  In fact, the hat emitted infrared light from its LEDs. That light would interfere with the surveillance cameras’ images of the wearer, creating a halo glow that blocked observance of the panhandler’s face. The panhandler with his cart containing a Sumoat bottle entered the store and got a sticker for his bottle of lotion to show it had already been purchased. He went immediately to get coffee with four creams and four sugars, then to the snack section.

  After seven shoppers followed the LED hat wearer into the supermarket, Trench Coat entered the market with a bottle in his shopping cart. The bottle had a receipt taped on it — for refund at check out, if asked. He carefully shadowed Inez without alerting her or any store patrons. She picked up peanut butter; he picked an identical size and brand of peanut butter. She chose preserves; he matched the preserve selection for his cart. He took occasional detours that masked his shadowing of her. Sometimes he followed Inez by being ahead of her. One time he inconspicuously did a 180-degree turn and looped around the aisle passing her head-on. He mentally photographed the contents of her cart on a continual basis while casually surveying all about him. He was pleased to see the panhandler studying the choices of breads.

  Hyper-observant yet with a laid back appearance, he continued adding items to his cart to match hers one for one. On several aisles, he was able to monitor Inez in the mirror-like effect of the glass doors in the frozen foods section. Sometime after she put the Sumoat brand of daily moisturizing lotion in her cart, he watched Inez, grocery list and pen in hand, leave her cart to head for the adjacent produce section. She methodically sorted through the serrano peppers, intently picking out the ones ripening from green to hints of yellow or orange that John McClain preferred.

  At this opportunity, Trench Coat parked his cart behind Inez’s. He stripped the taped receipt from the Sumoat lotion bottle he brought into the store and slipped the receipt into his coat pocket. He left the Sumoat in his cart. He shopped quickly for a product on the shelf abeam his cart and shook his head as if not finding his choice. He returned toward the two tandem carts. Nonchalantly, he walked off with Inez’s cart as if it were his own. He shopped for two more items, then proceeded to check out. He paid with cash.

  Inez returned with a plastic bag containing eight serrano peppers that she put in her shopping cart. She never noticed the changeout of the carts. Everything looked normal to her. Her cart, however, had the bottle of oatmeal-based body lotion that Trench Coat artfully left in lieu of the one she took off the grocery store shelf.

  Congress must stop overspending.

  _______________

  Arriving back at the McClains’, Inez was greeted by one of the protective detail. The agent knew her, “Inez, how’s it going? We need to do the usual.” Using the bed of her car’s trunk as a base, the agent took out each grocery product to check its integrity and seal. He handled every article but spent less time inspecting products not used internally like sponges, paper towels, and lotion. Then he helped Inez rebag the items.

  “Looks good, Inez. Have a good day.” He rejoined the other agent who stayed in the Ford Taurus parked in front of the residence. “More busywork,” he remarked to his partner, “but you never know, do you?”

  Inez took one load of groceries into the house. Before taking the second, she approached the agents: “Mrs. McClain will ask if you and your friend want coffee. May I bring you some?”

  “Very kind of you, Inez. Not allowed.” Two reasons for this came to the agent’s mind. Less important, the ingratiating effect of accepting gifts. More important was potentially incapacitating an agent with an adulterated product. There was probably a third, but he couldn’t think of it.

  Inez took the last of the groceries into the house. She explained in advance to Mrs. McClain that the agents could not accept coffee.

  “You know, Inez, you are a jewel to think of things like that, extras, and do all of your normal work, too. Thank you… Oh, Inez, the master bathroom toilet is plugged, would you please call a plumber?”

  Chapter 36

  December 12

  Georgetown

  Congressman John McClain rose a 5:00 A.M. to get in a thirty-minute interval-training work out on his elliptical trainer. He followed exercise with a spa experience in his Tymisauna Milan steam-sauna shower. He tuned in WASH 97.1 FM for soft rock music. Stairway to Heaven was playing. The sauna relaxed his tight thighs and calves. The steam invigorated his lungs and cleared his nasal passages. He finished with several alternations of cold and hot water spray. His allergist had advised him this would desensitize his nasal tissues to their overreaction to entering air conditioned rooms in the warmer months. He hoped this would reduce his stuffiness at work next summer. He hated feeling self-conscious about his sinuses at press conferences.

  He toweled himself off on a plush white bath mat and proceeded to apply generous amounts of oatmeal-based lotion to his whole body to lock in the modicum of moisture remaining on his skin. He could easily reach his lower back region, but the upper back required dabbing lotion on below the shoulders, followed by a sawing motion with his flax-derived linen towel.

  The texture of the lotion in the new bottle of Sumoat was somewhat different from what he remembered, perhaps slightly oilier. American companies, he mused, always reformulating for newer and better. Sometimes newer just wasn’t better. Why couldn’t they leave good enough alone? Self-aware, he wondered whether Congress was engaged in perpetual tinkering, too. He smiled in amusement. He was pleased with himself: He was still grounded enough to see the big picture. He was also somewhat disappointed that he was betraying the deep-seated ideals he had in high school. He put the lotion back in its place on the counter.

  Initially, John felt overstimulated — for no apparent reason. His heart raced. Not having eaten anything yet, he was surprised at the waves of nausea he was beginning to experience. He felt terrible. His image in the mirror showed a distressed face. He noticed the onset of a screaming headache and the need to force his breathing. He doubled up in stomach pain and fell onto the floor. He vomited and was overwhelmed by waves of convulsions. His central nervous system seemed under attack. “Help, Susan, help!” he weakly cried.

  Susan heard the thud of John’s hitting the floor, not the cry for help. She did not know how to handle the writhing body of her husband on the floor. She called 911. The operator gave generic advice for treating an epileptic seizure: Keep the patient on his side, minimize possible injury from nearby objects, don’t attempt to put anything in his mouth, etc. Susan did not think of the federal agents out front in a car until she went to unlock the front door preemptively for the EMTs. At that time she ran outside to frantically scream and wave at the one awake agent in a dark s
edan. She ran back inside to John without waiting for the agents’ response. Two other agents kept their previous positions: one outside the front of the house in another car, the other in the backyard.

  _______________

  The EMTs entered the open front door, shouting their arrival. They followed the voice reply of one agent standing in the master bedroom, who pointed them to the master bathroom where Susan and his partner agent watched the seizing John on floor. In short order, the EMTs whisked John outside on a gurney to the ambulance bound for Georgetown University Hospital.

  Two agents followed the ambulance in a car. They reported up their chain that Congressman McClain was being taken to the hospital for an apparent seizure. Another agent rode in the ambulance with the Congressman. His partner stayed behind to secure the house in the unlikely event it became a crime scene.

  Later in the day, unlikely would move past likely as the facts became known.

  Chapter 37

  December 12

  Georgetown

  Zach and Barb arrived separately at Georgetown University Hospital just after 7:30 A.M. “This is one hell of a note,” Zach led.

  “And good morning to you, Special Agent Bridger.”

  “Yeah, yeah, right back at you, Special Agent Symanski. I’ll be better after two cups of strong coffee — not yours… This case reminds me of trying to hit curve balls thrown by ‘Twisty’ McGrath back in American Legion baseball. I still have nightmares about that.”

  The agents ran the traps. They learned the Congressman was pronounced dead shortly after arrival at the hospital, cause of death to be determined. They expressed their condolences to Mrs. McClain. She agreed to their stopping by in the afternoon after an autopsy had been performed. The agents could always cancel if the Congressman died of natural causes.

  _______________

  The autopsy revealed John McClain died of nicotine poisoning. Zach and Barb arrived at the Georgetown home of Congressman and Mrs. John McClain to break the news to the latter. Susan denied John’s use of nicotine in any form: “No cigarettes, no cigars, no electronic cigarettes, no nicotine gum, and no nicotine patches!”

  Zach’s mind wandered. He could hear his wiseguy classmates at the Naval Academy asking, “What about second-hand smoke?” Zach was always amazed that he could stifle inappropriate comedic remarks that popped into his consciousness. Maybe plebe year at Annapolis had ingrained that appropriateness of behavior. Susan’s pained face kept him somber and brought him back to the investigation.

  Susan McClain: “I knew this was coming… It was inevitable!… I told him not to sponsor that stupid legislation… He just wouldn’t listen!” The anger juxtaposed with tears was sincere. The two conflicting emotions were like a hot fudge sundae. The hot fudge always wins.

  “Ma’am,” Barb offered, “we’re very sorry for your loss. We’re looking into what specifically happened…”

  Susan interrupted Barb, “There’s something you should know up front. I’m pretty straightforward about things… John did not even know… I had gone to an attorney to begin divorce proceedings… I still loved John, but the threat by some assassin hanging over our heads has been too much. It’s been like a death wish for John to stick his neck out on spending legislation. Anyway, I thought you should know… And I did not kill him!

  “Also I’m ashamed to tell you: You’ll find empty bottles of alcohol in the garbage and maybe discarded empty bottles of Atavan. I’ve had trouble coping with the threats on Congress and John’s disregard for them… I just wanted you to know.”

  Zach absorbed the revelations, “Mrs. McClain thank you for being so candid. We know the strain of the threat on Congress is palpable throughout the District of Columbia. We are here to get to the bottom of this.”

  Barb joined in, “While you and I talk, Special Agent Bridger will be walking through the house with your housekeeper, if that’s all right with you. Would you like to sit down?” Barb nodded affirmatively while skillfully getting permission to search the house.

  Zach nodded at her in admiration. For a Secret Service agent, he thought, she knows some nuances my peers don’t know. “Ma’am, if you’ll excuse me,” Zach exited to join Inez. He was also grateful in a cosmic justice sense that Barb was escaping the very dismal morale of the scandal-ridden Secret Service for a time.

  _______________

  “Inez, have you noticed anything different around the house in the last few days? Have there been any strangers in or around the house? Any meter readers outside? Any repairmen inside or outside? Anything suspicious?” Zach posed the questions with thoughtful slowing of his speech, honoring Inez’s possible difficulty with English as a second language.

  Zach was impressed with the university-schooled Colombian. A plumber had been in the master bathroom to snake a clogged toilet after she had shopped yesterday. She had his card. She had been away from the house during her work hours the previous day from around 10 A.M. to shop for groceries for over an hour. Otherwise, she had worked for the family for over 18 months. Mrs. McClain had complete confidence in her.

  Inez willingly surrendered her cell phone. FBI techies determined the cell phone had been cloned by looking at phone company records. The additional simultaneous calls to a repetitious cell phone number over a few days were the tell tag. Given that, her phone would also have been vulnerable to being turned into a microphone. The cloner could have sent a command to put Inez’s cell into the diagnostic mode. In that mode, the cloner could have monitored sounds and conversations near the cloned cell phone. If the cloner left the cloned cell in diagnostic mode, Inez might have noticed the cell’s being a microphone if she’d tried to make a call. The cloner, however, had been alert to that, taking the phone out of diagnostic mode at any hint of use. In any case, the cloner’s throwaway phone was apparently only used for a short period, then likely destroyed.

  Inez had also consented to a search of her person, her car, and her apartment. Other than the cloned cell phone, there were no surprises. Inez denied knowledge of having a cloned cell phone. No, she did not routinely monitor her phone account online. “Who has time for that?”

  _______________

  Barb was quick to establish rapport with Susan McClain. In another life, Barb could have been a world-class psychotherapist. She listened more than she spoke, but she actively poked enough to keep the festering boil from closing. Where Rachel Zimmer had needed listening compassion and empathy, Susan needed solely to vent. While she evidently did love her husband, his death ended the ever-present anxiety that had plagued her life for months. The event she feared most gave her relief of a tension that had immobilized her emotional life.

  Grateful for the catharsis, Susan crushingly hugged Barb. “Will you keep me in the loop on how your investigation progresses — when your policies allow? I’ll call you if I remember anything or think to question something unusual we haven’t discussed. Here are duplicates of our house keys and car keys. We have two cars—a Volvo sedan and an Audi sedan. I think you have my husband’s cell phone already. Here’s my cell phone…Please find out who did this to my husband!”

  Chapter 38

  December 12

  District of Columbia

  Zach opened, “The lab found a lethal level of nicotine in the lotion in McClain’s bathroom. There was also some emu oil in the lotion — not a listed additive in the lotion. The tech said nicotine could permeate through the skin on its own. But in this case, emu oil accelerated that as an effective carrier for the nicotine. The lab tech says nicotine is an alkaloid neurotoxin. It has a half-life as short as one hour. Highly concentrated nicotine spilled on the skin can be lethal. For you MENSA types, like some pesticides, nicotine molecules compete with acetylcholine for binding to cholinergic receptors in the body, resulting in excess systemic acetylcholine with potentially lethal effects… Whatever that means!” Zach laughed at his lack of understanding of biochemistry.

  “So the question is…” Zach returned to seriousness.

>   “How did the lotion get into bathroom and before that, the house?” Barb completed his question. “And who put it there? The plumber, Lem Pfister, was there yesterday afternoon. Let’s interview him. See whether he has a MOM.”

  “A what?”

  “Method, opportunity, and motive. Try to keep up… I thought you Feebs knew these basics!” Barb jabbed.

  Zach tried to ignore the derogatory term for an FBI agent, but then struck back. “We try to keep up with the buzzwords, but frankly we’re too busy staying away from prostitutes — taking down criminals, and avoiding scandals. Makes me wonder what kind of service your organization is keeping secret,” Zach threw a haymaker at the Secret Service. Realizing he had gone way too far with a colleague he admired, he backed off. “Apologies Barb, that was way of base on my part… I like your acronym. You might make an FBI agent yet. We know the method. He had the opportunity. Motive?”

  “Zach, sidestepping a little, Inez said she put a new Sumoat lotion in the Congressman’s bathroom yesterday after shopping at the supermarket. The plumber was in the bathroom after that. Or if we assume a mass tainting of the product, we better have the supermarket pull all of the Sumoat lotion for the lab’s analysis — just in case. I’m thinking of the infamous 1982 Tylenol tampering case. I don’t think this is product tampering for mass effect, but it is conceivable that a murderer might take a shotgun approach to getting to the Congressman.”

  “Another great catch! I was just about to say that myself,” Zach smiled. “As my battalion commander in the Marines used to say, ‘Great minds run in the same gutter.’ Maybe I should rephrase that,” he said with a slight grin.