It was Monday morning, and as we had done in the previous weeks, we called for a case meeting on the Phantom. All five of us detectives, along with Ron O’Hara, slowly gravitated to the bureau’s meeting room. Rachael Storm was asked to join us.
The Santa Barbara station lieutenant, Art Knight, had not-so-conveniently located the employee coffee machine in this conference room for everyone in the station to use. Throughout the day, our meetings would be interrupted by secretaries, jailers, and deputies wandering through to get their cup of joe. Most of the time, this wasn’t a problem, and we enjoyed the occasional visitors. This morning, we began to get antsy to shoo all of them out, though, because we had lots to discuss in private.
First, a records secretary walked in, followed by Deputy Phillips. Our group was sitting around the table, ready to begin the briefing, and I was standing at the whiteboard, hastily jotting down notes. I was glancing toward Will, standing by the coffee machine, when I saw him suddenly snap his head toward Rachael Storm and then quickly walk out the door. He had a strange look on his face. Why didn’t he finish stirring his coffee or even say hi?
One, two, three seconds went by, and then it came. Oh, man…Shit! You kidding me? Whew! Will Phillips had left his distinctive calling card.
Storm’s eyes widened, and her hands quickly covered her nose and mouth. She whispered, “Oh, my God!” and hurried out into the hallway.
Louie yelled out to her, “You just experienced the dangers of law enforcement firsthand, Rachael!”
I inwardly chuckled. I couldn’t have expressed it better myself, Will.
For the next forty-five minutes, we all summarized the evidence in the Phantom case and what our witness interviews and investigation had uncovered. It was all out on the table now, laid plainly in front of our newfound “friend,” Rachael Storm. Her pen was pressed hard to paper during every comment, feverishly taking in all our previously confidential work. She had it all now. We were following orders, weren’t we? I felt like a traitor, spewing out state secrets to the enemy. It was torture. Storm nodded her head over and over, making me believe she either agreed with our deductions, or she intended to crucify us with the information she now possessed. I imagined Pontius Pilate nodding his head as he sentenced Jesus Christ to be nailed to the cross.
After our meeting, as I was walking away feeling defeated, Rachael Storm stepped up to me and said, “Detective Rhinehardt, Kevin, can I speak to you privately?”
I instantly thought, Holy shit, lady, you got what you wanted. You want to kick me in the balls while I’m down, right?
I couldn’t take her into our toilet Cone of Silence, so we walked out behind the back door to the station into the jail sally port. We strolled for about a minute before she lightly touched my arm, bringing me to an abrupt stop. I turned to her, and she said, “Kevin, I have wanted to say something to you.”
Uh-oh! I was half musing she would tell me she wanted to have my baby, but instead I mouthed, “You have the floor, lady.”
Her first words set me back on my heels.
“I want to say I’m sorry. We met under a bad set of circumstances, and I threw gas on the fire that day by pushing all your buttons. I was just trying to do my job—too hard.”
I blurted out, “You screwed me, Rachael. You twisted my words around on network television. You made me out to be a total asshole. My chief made me feel like a stupid fool.”
Her voice was trembling as she replied, “My editor did that, Kevin, not me. I didn’t know about the editing on the final piece until I read the copy right before we went on the air. I’m so sorry. He doesn’t like the sheriff’s office. I should have refused to do it, but you don’t know what it’s like working for that guy. He’s a real pig.”
Maybe it was the sincerity in her eyes, or maybe it was her low-cut blouse and intoxicating perfume, but either way…aw shit, I believed her.
“Thanks for telling me that, Rachael. Let’s work together from now on and get the truth out for a change. Agreed?”
She looked at me with those big brown eyes. “Kevin, I swear I will.”
Less than twenty minutes later, Biff and Louie were rolled out to assist patrol with a robbery in progress. Ted had a follow-up investigation he was tied up on, so I figured it was time I cleaned up my lagging caseload and get to those crime reports the sarge had piled high on my desk. As detectives, we normally don’t have the luxury of working just one case, week after week, like in the case of this particular murder. Patrol takes the original report on routine cases, and they pay us detectives to do any follow-up investigations on them. We look at the evidence, do any necessary follow-up, and then submit cases to the DA for a criminal filing if we believe the elements of the alleged crime are there to prove it.
I waded through the files on my desk, reading one report about a Budweiser assault between two drunkards. I closed it as being a case of mutual combat. Another burglary case had absolutely no leads, so I called the victim to ask for any new details he might have: nothing new, so that case was inactivated. Then I came across a domestic-violence report. A man and his wife argued at their home, located in an upscale neighborhood outside of Santa Barbara. The responding deputy’s investigation, the evidence, and their subsequent statements showed that the husband may have pushed his wife during an argument. She then chased him out of their house into their front yard. It sounded interesting. Neighbors had called 9-1-1 to report the brouhaha. He pushed her around, and then maybe she threatened him somehow. I had to do some more groundwork on this one before making a decision on what, if any, charges to ask for.
Domestic-violence cases are serious, and when they are handled the wrong way, they tend to come back and bite people in the ass. People die when nothing is done, just like Nicole and OJ.
There were no other witnesses, though. No one was hurt, and the physical evidence seemed to support each of the spouses’ statements as to what had happened. I wondered if either of them had any prior record of assault or other actions that might mean they had a tendency toward future violence.
I did a CLETS and NCIC computer check on each of them (the California and national computer databases, respectively). I also ran their criminal histories and Googled each of their names. We always check any AKAs, and the woman, Cheryl Howard, had previously been known by Cheryl Oswald, according to her printout. The husband, Dan Howard, was a financial mover and shaker. His brokerage company was being publicly traded on NASDAQ, and he and his wife were Santa Barbara socialites. I smelled big money, so I paid special attention to this one. I hated coddling rich people, but that was just how it was in this business. I didn’t have to like it, but money moved the world. I paid attention before I was ordered to.
When I Googled “Cheryl Oswald,” pages and pages of folks came back by that name: Cheryl Oswald the singer, an obituary for eighty-eight-year-old Cheryl Oswald, seven Facebook pages of Cheryl Oswalds, and one police lieutenant by that name. Finally, I brought up an Internet hit that piqued my interest—from the Miami Herald, ten years before: “Authorities in Cayman Islands investigate suspicious drowning involving fiancé of Florida resident Cheryl Oswald.”
My Cheryl Howard had admitted to a prior address in Miami to the investigating deputy. The article, and the two subsequent follow-up pieces regarding it, described how this Cheryl Oswald and her fiancé, Troy Williams, were on scuba-diving vacation off the island of Cayman Brac. On a deep dive, Troy drowned while inside a coral cave. It was suspicious because he was found to have succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning, which had precipitated his drowning. The final follow-up article about this incident stated that after a month of investigation, the Cayman authorities had “declined to further pursue the matter” after their coroner magistrate ruled it was an accidental death. Was this my Cheryl Howard, or was it just a crazy coincidence?
Scuba diving was a passion of mine. I was first certified at the age of thirteen. Mike Nelson, of Sea Hunt fame, was my hero. Watching him every week on our black-and-wh
ite TV, in his silver wetsuit, fighting the bad guys underwater, and cutting their air hoses to escape was so cool. Funny, after all these years of diving, I never once had to cut an air hose. I enjoyed diving so much that I took a couple of weeks off and earned my Open Water Scuba Instructor (OWSI) certification. I had since taught hundreds of students and logged thousands of dives. Hundreds of them were deep dives, and I knew that a death while diving from carbon monoxide poisoning was very rare.
Most professional dive operations are extremely cautious to avoid exposing a compressor they use to any contaminated air source. I knew that the air we breathe is comprised of roughly 20 percent oxygen, 78 percent nitrogen, and some trace gases, including carbon monoxide, which amounts to only about 0.031 percent. Breathing a higher percentage of carbon monoxide, especially under the pressures of diving, is deadly. If carbon monoxide was found in that guy’s tank air, it only got there through contamination by an outside source, like the exhaust from a gas engine. It was downright unheard of in modern diving.
I worked part time for a scuba shop some years ago, and our gas compressor was protected against any outside contamination. Most exotic places like the Cayman Islands catered to divers (it was their bread and butter) and their safeguards were well-documented. How could this have happened to this man, Troy Williams? I was fascinated. I had to know if it involved this same woman who allegedly chased her hubby out of the house during an argument. I needed to know more of the factual details in the Caribbean incident.
By the end of the day, I had sent a teletype to INTERPOL requesting that a full copy of the Cayman Brac police reports be sent to me. I put the Howard DV file aside for the moment.
At 4:49 p.m., I straightened up the piles of paperwork on my desk. I got a lot accomplished, and I felt good about it. This was one of the few recent days that I was actually going to go home on time and have a beer (Oh yeah, I forgot—an iced tea). I could enjoy some quality time with my family. At five minutes to five, the phone on my desk rang. Aw, shit.
“Hello, Detective Rhinehardt, it’s Will. Kev, hey, Kev, listen. Are you busy?”
“Phillips, do you realize it’s five o’clock? I’m going out the door. What do you want?”
“Kevin, I’ve been talking to lots of people down here at Village Commons, asking them about anything we might have missed. You know, investigating.”
“Will, make it quick, all right? I’ve got somewhere to go.”
“OK, OK. Three weeks ago, you asked me to interview all the ground-maintenance people here to see what they might have seen, and I came up with zip. I was just driving through there again on patrol, and one guy—wait, let me get my notes—Jose Camacho, who is one of the gardeners, well, he flagged me down.”
“Phillips, hurry up. It’s five o’clock, and I gotta go home.”
“Listen, Kev, he’s Mexican, and I know only a little Spanish, but I think he said he was sorry and he had lied to me before. I’m pretty sure he said he saw someone hanging around Redbone’s town house a couple days before the murders. Kevin, you really need to talk to this guy.”
Murphy’s Law just bit me right in the ass. That iced tea would have to wait.
Chapter Eleven
The Devil Wore Red
I was hustling toward my Taurus when I spotted Rachael Storm in the parking lot, preparing to drive away.
“Hey, Rachel! Hey, wait. Come here.”
I saw her glance my way and then stand on the brake. I trotted over to her Toyota Prius, which was stopped halfway into the street.
“I just got a call from patrol that someone with information on the Phantom case wants to give a statement. Want to tag along?”
I figured it was time to test our newfound friendship.
“Sure, Kevin. Let me grab my recorder.”
“Hey, no can do, Rachael. Only cops can record investigative interviews, but feel free to take as many notes as you want.”
She backed up, chirping her tires, and parked catawampus in the lot. Grabbing her notebook, she hopped into my unit. I called Ted on the cell on the way over.
“Oh, man. Sorry, Kev, but I just sat down with a cold one. Can you handle it? Just let me know what he has to say, and I can come in if you need me to. Thanks, buddy.” I hung up, thinking, What a pussy.
I found Phillips’s black-and-white parked near the tennis courts at the Commons. Next to Will was a short Hispanic fellow wearing soiled green coveralls. He was leaning against one of those big tractor mowers—the kind guys wish they had, even when they have lawns the size of only a postage stamp. I walked up to Jose Camacho and said hello and tried to speak to him with the small bit of Spanish I knew. It became very clear, very quickly, that other than a rudimentary knowledge of English, this guy didn’t speak my brand of Spanish either. I had a hard time understanding a lick of what he said. I began to wonder if Will was wasting my time.
“Phillips, so what do you think this guy told you? You don’t speak Spanish either, do you?”
“Yeah, some, and I thought I understood him to say he lied when he said, ‘Te menti,’ and I’m pretty sure that when he said, ‘Vi a alguien de la casa,’ he meant he saw someone near Redbone’s house.”
None of us spoke fluent Spanish, so I realized that I needed to call for backup. I needed that candy-lickin’, bar-hoppin’ Louie Ocampo. I hated to call him out after hours, but I needed this interview to be done right. Otherwise, it would be my ass.
“Hello, Louie. I really hate to bother you, but…”
“Hell, Rhino, it’s almost six thirty, and I just sat down to some carnitas. Shit, man, I had a feeling this was gonna happen one of these nights with this screwy case.”
After telling him what Will Phillips believed the guy was saying, Luis said he could meet up with us in thirty minutes at the Solvang station.
Jose Rivas Camacho had worked at the Village Commons for nearly three years. His wife and their two small children lived with him in a run-down, one-bedroom apartment in a subsidized housing project on the outskirts of Los Olivos, a neighboring town of Solvang in Santa Barbara County. His wife worked cleaning wealthy local ladies’ homes. She charged far less than most of the other cleaning people and did a far better job to boot. The rub was that neither Jose nor his wife, Amelia, had a green card. They paid three thousand dollars to a coyote and spent two days in the hills between Tijuana and San Diego when Amelia was four months pregnant with their first child. They had fortunately timed their crossing for the cooler months, or she might have lost the baby. They risked everything to provide a better life for their unborn child in the United States back then, and now Jose feared he was taking an even greater risk by speaking to the police. While waiting for Louie to get to the station, I could see the fear in his eyes as we sat quietly in the interview room. I didn’t have a clue how scared he really was.
Luis Ocampo arrived, wearing a faded denim shirt, blue jeans, and a somewhat tattered sweater vest. He had a slight odor of that demon rum on him, too. We had an unwritten policy that all detectives dress professionally when we’re called out. After hours, this usually meant light business attire: khakis, collared shirts, and decent shoes. I was surprised to see Louie dressed like a dock worker. The slight odor of alcohol seemed normal for Louie after hours, though. He later told me that when he interviewed broncs (illegal Mexicans), he always dressed down. Suits and fancy clothes meant authority, and Mexicans felt authority could not be trusted. Many Mexican politicians and cops were corrupt, and the common people distrusted them all. To some, the only thing cops were good for was to shake people down for mordida (a bribe) and beat people up when they get caught drunk.
Luis asked that he be able to speak to Camacho alone. I agreed and watched by way of the video system located in the next room, a very small room. Compared to the video room at our main station, the one in Solvang looked like a postage stamp. Rachael and Will sat squeezed in beside me, glued to the monitor, holding tight on to their earphones. I speak Pocho, a blend of English and Spanish,
and I can usually get my point across to local Mexicans. However, Jose was wide-eyed and quiet when I tried speaking to him earlier, making me believe that either I wasn’t as good with Spanish as I thought, or that he was from another region of Mexico where they spoke their own special Spanish dialect.
Louie knew them all. When the two men began conversing, I had a hell of a time understanding a word they were saying. The only thing I clearly understood was the strength of Rachael’s perfume and how bloomin’ hot it was in that tight little room.
I saw some of the tension on Jose Camacho’s face drain away as their conversation continued. After about thirty minutes, Luis came out and briefed me on what he knew so far. Jose was scared to death to get involved with the local police on anything. To him, police equaled immigration, and an immigration problem was the last thing he wanted to run afoul of. Both his young children had been born in California, and he knew that should he and his wife fall afoot of the law, they both would be deported. No one else in the United States would raise their kids, so they all would have to go back to Mexico. They had broken the immigration laws for the greater good of their entire family.
Louie had assured him we were not the immigration authorities and that we had no interest in notifying the INS about their whereabouts. Jose wasn’t buying it, though.
Camacho might have been a gardener, but he was smart gardener. He asked Louie about being a witness to a serious crime. Slicing up people was pretty serious.
“¿Matar gente es seria, si?”
What if he had to testify? What would happen then? Louie called for another time-out, telling Jose he would talk to the man in charge. I guess that man was me. I left the video room to huddle with Ocampo.
I had one prior case involving undocumented aliens. In that case, it was a Chinese girl who was involved in a gang-related robbery and kidnapping. I worked with the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) to obtain a temporary visa for her. Upon my recommendation, at the end of the trial, she was granted a work permit. You scratch our back; we scratch yours. I told Louie to tell Jose that we would contact the INS to ensure his family had the right to stay and work in the United States if he cooperated and was willing to testify, should it be necessary.
Slice of Greed: A Kevin Rhinehardt Mystery (BOL Mysteries Book 1) Page 8