Sam Kincaid 01 - The Commission

by Michael Norman

  “Sounds all right to me,” said Hansen. “Anybody have a problem with it?” Nobody spoke. Several heads nodded in agreement.

  “Let’s get back to the main issue for a moment,” said Hansen. “Do we continue this investigation using our personnel, or do we hand it off to Wendover P.D. and get the hell out of it?”

  For the first time, Deputy Chief Puffer spoke. “I think we’ve done our job and done it well. I recommend we pull out. Our investigation correctly identified Vogue’s killer and found plenty of evidence to support a successful prosecution. It’s not our problem that the perp got himself killed before we had a chance to apprehend him. It’s Wendover P.D.’s problem now. Let them handle it.”

  Spoken like a true wimp, I thought. The man was predictable if little else.

  Hansen turned to Kate. “Lieutenant McConnell, what are your thoughts on the matter? You and Kincaid have been the ones carrying the ball on this.”

  Before she had a chance to respond, Locke interrupted. “I support Clarence’s position, with one possible caveat. How would the press portray our decision to withdraw from the case and how might that affect public opinion?”

  Clearly, Locke and Puffer were making a power play that put Kate in an unenviable position. She would have to make a choice to support or oppose her superiors, and risk some kind of retaliation later, if she took a position in opposition to theirs.

  Locke was smart, politically savvy, and a highly capable administrator who also happened to be a ruthless organizational climber. He had never hesitated to run roughshod over others on his way up the career ladder, and he rarely missed an opportunity to pander to the TV cameras in high-profile cases. I was more than a little surprised that we hadn’t seen him at Vogue’s residence the night of the murder or at the Mayor’s initial press conference.

  The lady didn’t disappoint. Glancing quickly at Puffer and then Locke, Kate shifted slightly in her seat and looked directly at Chief Hansen. “I think we’ve got a clear obligation, both practically and ethically, to remain on the case. Nobody has a better understanding of the case than we do. If we pull out now, we leave the job half-finished. Sure, we can take solace in the fact that we correctly identified Watts as Vogue’s murderer. But this investigation isn’t over until somebody finds out who’s really responsible for the conspiracy to have Levi Vogue murdered. That’s the million-dollar question. It seems inconceivable to me that we’d simply walk away and expect the Wendover Police Department to carry the case forward. They don’t have the resources or experience to pull it off.”

  Locke interrupted again. “That’s not exactly true, Kate. Wendover P.D. can do what any small department in Utah can do, and that is to request assistance from the State Attorney General’s Office. They have a solid investigative staff that exists to support just this kind of endeavor. They do it all the time.”

  Puffer didn’t speak but nodded his head in agreement.

  “That’s true,” admitted Kate. “But let’s be honest. Everybody knows the A.G.’s Office does the best it can to support small law enforcement agencies that require assistance, but they lack experience when it comes to investigating homicides.

  “The other issue we haven’t discussed is what possible reaction the Vogue family will have to our abandoning the investigation. I’d be a lot more worried about that than public opinion. Anybody care to volunteer to go out and have that conversation with Richard Vogue?” Big surprise. No takers.

  The room fell momentarily silent until Hansen spoke. “Norm, where does your department stand on this issue?”

  “I’ve discussed it with Sam and a couple of other people, and I think we stay committed to the investigation. I haven’t heard anything so far that makes me change my mind. Part of the role of the Special Investigations Branch is to assist state and local law enforcement in just this kind of situation. If Watts’ murder had occurred across the state line in Wendover, Nevada, I’d pull Kincaid and his troops off the investigation immediately. But that’s not the case. Besides, I received a call from Chief Corey earlier today, specifically asking that the SIB continue to provide assistance to his department.”

  “I got the same call,” said Hansen. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. Clarence, you and Hyrum make immediate arrangements to see Levi’s widow and explain the latest developments in the case. Tell her that we intend to continue our investigation, working in conjunction with the SIB and the Wendover P.D. Say nothing to her about her husband’s philandering with the stripper. I’ll have our public information officer draft a carefully worded press release. We’ll delay its release until you’ve visited the family. Questions anyone? Good! Then let’s get on it.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  After the meeting, Kate and I dropped down two floors to a small suite of offices where the sign on the front door read Checks & Forgery. The duty secretary handed Kate a one-page report summarizing the results of the handwriting analysis that compared the suicide note against writing samples belonging to Charles Watts. The examiner concluded that the suicide note was not written by Charles Watts, and thus was a forgery, albeit a high-quality one. The document examiner promised to provide us with a list of skilled Utah forgers early the next day.

  ***

  Kate and I walked together to the public safety building parking lot. “So where do you think this leaves us, Sam? Any ideas?”

  “I wish I knew. It’s damn frustrating. I do think we can eliminate a couple of our early theories.”

  “Yeah? Which ones?”

  “For one thing, any notion we had that Vogue was the victim of a random killing because he blundered into a burglary at home no longer makes sense. It doesn’t jive with Watts’ homicide being staged to look like a suicide.”

  Kate shrugged. “It always was an unlikely possibility. Besides, Vince worked his tail off with our burglary dicks on that angle and came up empty.”

  “The other theory we can probably toss is the prison gang connection. When you consider how Vogue was killed, it had all the trappings of a gang-style hit. Combine that with Vogue’s occupation, and it seemed like a good fit. But here’s the problem. Most of the gangs are organized along ethnic lines, blacks with blacks, whites with whites, Latinos with Latinos. Slick Watts wasn’t ever a gang banger. We ran his name through every gang database available. He wasn’t involved with skinheads, straightedgers, bikers, white supremacists, none of the Caucasian gangs. And if the killing was gang-ordered, the perp would’ve been an active gang member or a gang member wannabe.

  “And another thing. In the unlikely event a gang hired Watts to do Vogue and then decided to eliminate Watts, they wouldn’t have staged it to look like a suicide. He’d have gotten whacked just like Vogue in some kind of drive-by or street hit. That’s their signature. It’s how they do business,” I said.

  Kate sighed. “That leaves Sue Ann Winkler, the Starlite Motel, and the prostitution ring John Merchant talked about when he was singing at the hospital. I’ve had the feeling that there’s still something bothering you about that whole mess.”

  “I know I’m probably grasping at straws, but yeah, something is bothering me. We know that Vogue was involved in some unusual sexual practices—group sex and voyeurism for starters. Just who is the guy Sue Ann told us about, the mystery man with the tattoo on his arm that Vogue brought back to the motel for the three-way action? We’ve never identified him. Is it possible that Vogue was killed because he learned something about that place he wasn’t supposed to know? I think we should lean all over everybody associated with the Starlite Motel until we determine whether they had anything to do with his murder. I know it’s a long shot.”

  She shrugged. “It’s hard for me to reconcile the notion that a prostitution ring would get involved in contract murder. It doesn’t make sense unless they’re involved in something else a lot more sinister. I think it’s a long shot, but no, I don’t have any better ideas at the moment.

  “In the morning, I’ll have Vince pull their business lice
nse and any incorporation papers that may exist, and see what our vice people know about the place. It might be worthwhile to have a couple of teams set up visual surveillance near the motel for a few days and monitor the traffic going in and out. If the motel is a front for an organized prostitution ring or maybe a drug house, there ought to be plenty of people coming and going at all times of the day and night.

  “The best shot we’ve got right now is to try to identify the guy who wrote the suicide note. He’s our direct link to whoever hired Watts to kill Levi. I’ll get the list from the forgery guys in the morning. Then we’ll start running people down. That okay?”

  “Fine,” I replied. “I’ll send an e-mail to every probation and parole officer in the state soliciting names of any first-rate forgers. We’ll probably end up with some of the same people, but it should give us a fairly complete list.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  I slept in the next morning and didn’t arrive at the office until after nine o’clock. There was a message from Kate asking me to call her as soon as I got in. It seemed that Clarence Puffer and Hyrum Locke had gone out to the Vogue home right after our meeting with Chief Hansen to diplomatically advise Mrs. Vogue that there was good news and bad news. The good news: clearly, Levi Vogue’s murderer had been identified. The bad news: the killer had also been murdered.

  Apparently, the meeting with Margaret Vogue hadn’t gone all that well and resulted in her scurrying to see the family patriarch, Richard Vogue III. When Hansen arrived at his office the next morning, he found a terse message from Papa Vogue asking that all future developments in the case come directly to him, not Margaret. Further, his message requested an immediate meeting with Lt. McConnell and “that guy from the corrections department” who had been working on the case with her.

  At this point, Hansen made a serious blunder. For reasons known only to him, he dispatched Puffer and Locke to the corporate headquarters of Vogue Chemicals, only to have them unceremoniously rebuffed at the front door by an aide to Vogue. By the time Locke and Puffer returned to Salt Lake P.D. headquarters, an angry Richard Vogue had placed a telephone call to Mayor Baldwin. Following that age-old administrative principle that all shit runs downhill, Baldwin promptly called Hansen into his office and chewed on him for about an hour.

  I suppose that only someone with my acerbic sense of humor could appreciate the events of the morning involving Locke and Puffer. As I drove to police headquarters to pick up Kate for our visit with Richard Vogue, it occurred to me that this had to be an extremely stressful time for the entire Vogue family, and to have received this kind of information from anybody, no matter how diplomatically delivered, had to be upsetting.

  The corporate headquarters of Vogue Chemicals was located in downtown Salt Lake City near the convention center. After we signed the visitor log in the lobby, a neatly dressed security officer escorted Kate and me to a spacious fifth-floor conference room. The room was decorated in earth tone colors with fine-grained oak furniture. Several beautiful southwest landscape paintings hung on the walls.

  We waited for approximately ten minutes before a subdued Richard Vogue entered the boardroom, accompanied by Edward Tillman, whom he introduced as the company’s corporate legal counsel. He apologized for being late and thanked us for coming. Vogue was a distinguished-looking man, probably in his late sixties, with a mane of thick silver hair. His aristocratic look was enhanced by a well-tanned face and a lean, wiry physique that suggested a man who placed a premium on physical fitness. When he shook my hand, the grip was strong and his hand leathery. This was not a man who’d spent his entire work life sitting behind a desk.

  “Lieutenant McConnell, Mr. Kincaid, my wife Helen and I have been blessed with three wonderful children and eight grandchildren. Levi was our eldest child and our only son. I can’t begin to describe the pain and anguish that his murder has caused the entire family. We are a close-knit bunch, and this has been devastating for everyone.

  “Needless to say, the news Margaret received last evening from Deputy Chief Puffer and Mr. Locke only served to add to the family’s grief. Just when we’d adjusted to the notion that your investigation produced Levi’s killer, we were told that this Watts fellow had taken his own life.

  “Speaking personally, I found that news most disturbing. I had hoped, one day, to have the opportunity to ask Mr. Watts why he killed my son. His death, regardless of how it happened, permanently deprives me of that opportunity. And now to have the coroner’s office conclude that Mr. Watts’ death was really a murder staged to look like a suicide is almost beyond belief. I don’t know what to make of it, and I’m hoping you can help me.

  “Also, I’d like to ask that in the future, you contact me directly with information about the investigation. It’s much too overwhelming for Margaret to deal with right now.”

  We extended our personal condolences. Kate promised to communicate directly with him in the future. She explained that it had become imperative that we obtain statements from Margaret and her sons as soon as possible, and asked how he preferred we handle that.

  “I don’t see any reason why we can’t arrange something for tomorrow right here in this office.” Turning to Tillman, Vogue asked, “Ed, I realize that it’s Saturday, but could you arrange your schedule to be here, at say eleven o’clock in the morning? Margaret and the boys can meet you.”

  Tillman nodded. Ideally, this wouldn’t be the way we preferred to take statements from family members in a murder investigation, but it would have to do. Depending on how Tillman conducted himself, we could probably make it work.

  Vogue surprised us by expressing skepticism about the accuracy of the medical examiner’s findings relative to the death of Charles Watts. He demanded to know what specific evidence the State Medical Examiner’s Office used to conclude that Watts’ death was a criminal event rather than a suicide. Like us, he seemed to sense that a murder, arranged to look like a suicide, might hold unknown and ominous implications. After Kate reviewed the existing evidence, he seemed unhappily resigned to the accuracy of the coroner’s report.

  Finally, Vogue got around to asking the question we most hoped he wouldn’t. “Tell me this. Given the medical examiner’s findings regarding the murder of Watts, how close are you to having this mess resolved?” This particular question seemed to bring Tillman out of a semi-comatose state and to the edge of his seat, pen at the ready. Having anticipated this question, Kate and I had rehearsed an answer on the drive over. Unfortunately, while the answer contained elements of the truth, it also contained a deliberate and glaring omission.

  “I wish we were here with the answers I know you and your family so desperately want, but I’m afraid that’s just not the case,” said Kate. “We’re back to square one with respect to who murdered Watts and why his death was staged to look like a suicide. Finding the answers to those two questions will help us to unravel the mystery surrounding the murder of your son.”

  No fibs so far, I thought to myself.

  Kate continued. “What we can tell you is that our investigation has all but ruled out the possibility that your son’s death was a murder connected to a burglary gone awry. Instead, we’re convinced that Levi’s murder was somehow connected to his employment as a member of the parole board.”

  “We are carefully examining our offender population for possible suspects,” I said. “We’re looking at current inmates as well as former prisoners to see who might have harbored a grudge against the parole board in general, or your son in particular.”

  We carefully skirted any reference to his son’s occasional visits to the Satin & Lace Club and the Starlite Motel. We couldn’t predict how Vogue might react to that kind of negative information.

  Vogue listened intently and without interruption. I had the feeling he was just as interested in sizing us up as he was in absorbing the information we had provided. Tillman, although quiet, had been scribbling away on his legal pad like a well-paid corporate lawyer should. After pausing mo
mentarily, as though the lapse in conversation had given him time to digest everything we had shared, Vogue tossed us an unexpected curve.

  “I sincerely appreciate your taking the time to drop by on such short notice. It’s been most helpful. I’d like you to know that Helen and I are absolutely committed to finding out what happened to our son. We don’t care what it costs or how long it takes. We’re not going to rest until we have answers—all the answers.

  “With that end in mind, you should know that I’m considering hiring a team of private investigators, lead by a retired FBI agent, James Allen—you may know him—to look into my son’s death. Please don’t be offended. It isn’t personal. It’s just that I’ve been concerned from the outset that the police department hasn’t committed sufficient personnel to the investigation. I’ve reflected that concern to the appropriate city officials, unfortunately, to no avail. Should I elect to move forward with a parallel investigation, I hope that information will be shared by all parties, and that an atmosphere of mutual cooperation develops.”

  He didn’t give us an opportunity to discuss the merits of his proposal. He stood and said, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, my son’s funeral begins in two hours.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  As Kate and I drove back to Salt Lake City P.D., we discussed the implications of having to work with a team of private investigators. “I’ll tell you, Kate, and you’ve probably seen it too, when you get multiple agencies working the same case, it usually isn’t pretty. Instead of cooperation, you tend to get jealousy, petty bickering, and lots of turf protection. Assuming Vogue follows through with his plan, our investigation has the potential of becoming a first-rate clusterfuck.”

  Kate looked over at me. “What do you know about James Allen?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid. We’ve worked a couple of fugitive cases with some of his people in situations where one of our offenders committed a federal offense and then split the state. He retired about a year ago as the Special Agent in Charge of the Salt Lake City field office. He probably has solid management skills, but it sure doesn’t mean he was a good field agent. How about you?”