by J. A. Jance
“We need to be all over it before they are,” B. declared. “I want someone with a chip reader on the scene as soon as possible. Can you find out where and when the latest LEGO shipments have come ashore? Since we have an ending point, if we can pin down a beginning point, we may be able to track down who’s responsible.”
“I’ll get Cami started on the shipping situation the moment she comes in,” Stu said. “We have a chip reader here, but getting it to Cochise County in a hurry is a problem. I checked. We’re talking a five-hour trip. As for obtaining permission to scan the boxes, good luck with that.”
Cami Lee was a recent computer sciences graduate whom B. had snagged to be Stu’s assistant. She was a dynamite five-foot-nothing package, bright and talented. She was also totally capable when it came to doing her job, which included dealing with Stuart Ramey’s gruff style and less-than-easygoing personality.
“Ali and I will be on our way to Cottonwood in a matter of minutes,” B. said. “Try to find out any additional details you can about that wreck.”
“If you’re going to Bisbee, wouldn’t it make more sense for you to leave directly from home?” Stu suggested.
“No,” B. said firmly. “We’re coming there first.”
• • •
Seated at the foot of the bed, petting Bella, Ali was caught off guard by B.’s use of the plural pronoun “we.”
Taking the hint, Ali dashed into the bathroom. When she emerged minutes later, showered but still in her robe, B. was back on the phone with someone else. “Right,” he was saying. “The R66 will be just fine. What’s the pilot’s name again?” There was a pause while he made a note in his iPad.
Ali knew that the R66 was a Robinson helicopter, which meant B. was on the phone with Heli-Pros, a helicopter charter outfit out of Scottsdale that B. used on occasion.
“Okay, Chuck,” B. continued. “Landing at the Sierra Vista airport sounds about right: That should be closer than anywhere else. Can you have a rental car there? . . . Good . . . Yes, there will be two passengers. The lead passenger will be my wife, Ali Reynolds. She should be listed on my customer profile. The second one will be Stuart Ramey.”
B. paused again and then turned to Ali. “How much do you weigh?”
“Are we even having this conversation?” she demanded, hands on her hips, but she knew why he was asking. In order to calculate the range, the charter outfit needed to know the weight of the passengers. “One thirty-three,” she added.
B. repeated the information into the phone then turned to Ali again. “Any idea how much Stu weighs?”
“You think you’re going to talk Stu Ramey into going for a ride in a helicopter?” Ali asked. “Are you nuts? And why aren’t you going?”
“How much?” B. insisted, ignoring her query.
“Two forty or maybe two fifty,” Ali said with a shrug, “but that’s just a guess.”
B. passed along that information as well. “Right,” he said. “The usual place. I know Chuck isn’t our customary pilot. Let him know that we’ve got an approved helipad painted on the far northeastern corner of the High Noon parking lot.”
Ali waited until he was off the phone. “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“Because I’m going to be spending my whole day dealing with corporate guys from every corner of the planet. I can’t afford to be out of reach for as long as it takes to get back and forth to Bisbee. Stu would be lost on his own, and Cami’s not experienced enough.”
Shaking her head, Ali collected Bella and took her to the kitchen. Leland Brooks, their majordomo, was already on hand with a freshly brewed pot of coffee. “Will you and Mr. Simpson be wanting breakfast?”
“Sounds like breakfast of any kind is off the list for this morning,” she told him as he busied himself dishing out Bella’s food. “B. and I have to head out for Cottonwood as soon as we’re both decent. There’s some kind of crisis afoot, so whatever you were planning for dinner should probably be put on hold. I’m being deputized to a crime scene in Cochise County. I don’t know where B. will end up, and I have no idea when we’ll be back.”
“In other words, business as usual,” Leland said with a smile. “I take it you won’t be going into the office in Flagstaff today.”
Weeks earlier, Ali and B. both had been involved in the take-down of a polygamous group called The Family located in northern Arizona. The group’s leader, Richard Lowell, knowing he was about to be brought to justice for human trafficking, had gunned down most of the men in the cult, leaving the affected women and children to fend for themselves.
Some of the women had left The Family’s compound willingly. Others who tried to stay on ended up being evicted when the state discovered that most of the dwellings in the community weren’t built up to code and needed to be leveled. Most of the displaced homemakers had few job skills, and the kids were years behind students of the same age as far as scholastic achievement was concerned. Working as a volunteer three days a week out of an office shoehorned into the Flagstaff YWCA, Ali’s job was to smooth out some of the bumps and difficulties The Family’s women and children struggled with as they tried to find their way in a world entirely foreign to them.
“This is a priority right now,” Ali told Leland. “I’ll call the Y and let them know I’m traveling and won’t be in. Since I’m a volunteer, obviously they can’t fire me.”
When Ali returned to the bedroom with two cups of coffee in hand, she found that B., fully dressed, was back on the phone, speaking urgently and fluently in a language Ali suspected to be Danish. It was a lengthy conversation. By the time it ended, Ali was dressed and both of their coffee cups were empty. On their way to the garage, they found that Leland had freshly loaded travel mugs waiting for them on the kitchen counter.
“I’m telling you, you’re never going to be able to talk Stu Ramey into a helicopter,” Ali insisted again, once they were in B.’s car and belted into their seats. “He’s scared to death of flying.”
“He flew to Vegas for the wedding,” B. countered. “He flew to Paris last winter.”
“Yes, he did,” Ali conceded, “but it was under protest, and those trips were on board airplanes. Big difference. Planes are one thing; helicopters are another. He won’t go.”
“He will if you ask him,” B. said. “After all, aren’t you the smooth talker who persuaded him to take both those trips?”
“But why does Stu need to go in the first place?” Ali objected. “I’m not exactly tech savvy, but I’m pretty sure I’m smart enough to operate an RFID chip reader and relay the information back to you.”
“I’m sure you are, too,” B. replied. “But think about this: Supposing a crook of some kind has been tasked with driving a truckload of stolen merchandise from one place to another. How’s he going to figure out how to get there?”
“If he hasn’t been there before, he’d probably need a GPS device of some kind,” Ali answered.
“Right. And who do you suppose is one of the most qualified people on earth when it comes to extracting information out of whatever device Mr. Bad Guy may have been using? Not you and not me, either. Stu can do it with his eyes closed, but he has to be there—boots on the ground—to do the work. It’s just like a haircut: You can’t get a haircut over the phone.”
Ali’s phone rang. When she saw Cami’s name on the display, Ali put the call on speaker so B. could hear as well.
“Hi, Cami,” Ali said. “I’m here and so is B.”
“Good morning, guys,” Cami said cheerfully. “Here’s what I’ve got for you so far. The most recent shipment from LEGO arrived in Long Beach by way of the manufacturing plant in Monterrey, Mexico, yesterday morning. It consisted of twenty-five shipping containers devoted solely to LEGO. The last of that shipment was off-loaded yesterday by approximately three P.M. According to the GPS chips on the pallets, most of those containers are now en
route to their final destinations with the exception of ones that have already been delivered at various West Coast distribution centers between San Diego and San Francisco.”
Adding GPS locator beacons to all the pallets had been done at B.’s suggestion. Each chip listed the individual pallet’s weight as well as its final destination.
“We know from the readings on the pallet tracking system that the designated weight on each pallet remains unchanged from what it was when it left the plant in Mexico.”
“All the pallets may still weigh the same amount,” B. said darkly, “but I’m betting some of them aren’t carrying their original payloads or maybe the boxes in the wrecked truck are from a pallet that was never chipped in the first place.”
“As in ‘no chip, no pallet’?” Ali asked.
B. nodded. “Which would mean there are people working this scam at both ends of the food chain, and we need to find out who they are.”
Cami waited quietly on the phone, listening, until B. and Ali finished their own discussion. “Is that all you need me to do, then?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” Ali said. “What’s Stu’s favorite Subway sandwich?”
“The club,” Cami answered without hesitation. “With mayo, lettuce, tomato, and Jack cheese. Why?”
“Go get two of them,” Ali said, “one for him and one for me. It turns out he and I about to take a little trip, and we’ll need some sustenance along the way.”
“What kind of trip?” Cami asked.
“Never mind. We’ll tell you when we get there.”
• • •
By the time B. pulled into High Noon’s lot, Ali had finished letting the YWCA know that she would be a no-show for that day at least and maybe longer. Cami arrived at the same time they did. She was just exiting her car with a pair of sandwich bags in hand, when the shadow of a landing helicopter passed over her head and then swooped down for a landing in the far corner of the lot.
Cami looked at it and then back at Ali and B. “Surely you don’t think Stu’s going to ride in that.”
“He’ll have to,” B. said. “This is an important client, and we need a quick turnaround.”
Cami shook her head. “Good luck with that,” she said, and stalked inside with B. and Ali right behind her.
“Hey,” the unsuspecting Stu said when he saw them. “Marliss Shackleford just updated her blog.”
“What’s new?”
“Come look.”
B. and Ali walked over to Stu’s bank of computers and read over his shoulder.
At a hastily called press briefing this morning, Chief Deputy Tom Hadlock, media spokesman for the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office, has just confirmed what I had reported earlier. The fatality truck accident that occurred earlier today on Highway 92 east of Palominas is now being investigated as a homicide.
According to Chief Deputy Hadlock, the vehicle, carrying a load of possibly stolen goods, was attacked with a barrage of automatic gunfire just west of the San Pedro bridge. The driver of the vehicle, still unidentified, was found dead at the scene. An autopsy is scheduled later this morning with the Cochise County Medical Examiner.
Chief Deputy Hadlock is urging anyone who might have been traveling on Highway 92 between the hours of midnight and three A.M. to contact the sheriff’s office, especially if they happened to spot anything out of the ordinary.
In the briefing, Chief Deputy Hadlock said the truck was carrying “contraband” of some kind and declined to discuss the nature of said goods. But that’s just him. He may still be playing the old “refuse to confirm nor deny” game, but I’m convinced that the stolen goods in question are LEGO sets.
Stay tuned and keep in mind that you heard it here first.
“I suspect Ms. Shackleford here most likely isn’t one of the local sheriff’s favorite people,” Ali observed when she finished reading the blog post. “There’s some obvious animosity here, and someone who publishes unsubstantiated rumors is liable to be blackballed from the room.”
“Which means you should probably have a little chat with Ms. Shackleford when you’re down there,” B. said. “After all, I’m not the kind of person who turns up my nose at unsubstantiated rumors.”
“You’re going there?” Stu asked. “To Bisbee?”
“No,” B. said. “You are—you and Ali. There’s likely to be a tech component to all this. If so, I’m hoping you can glean as much information from that as possible.”
“But I already told you,” Stu said. “It’s more than a five-hour drive from here.”
“We won’t be driving,” Ali said. “B. called Heli-Pros. Our aircraft is already out in the parking lot, ready to go.”
“A chartered helicopter?” Stu said, sounding alarmed. “You expect me to get on a helicopter? I don’t do helicopters. I weigh too much, and I know too much about gravity.”
“Stu, we need you to do this,” B. reasoned. “LEGO is an important client, and we need to do whatever’s necessary to learn what we can about what’s happened.”
“Not if it means I have to ride in a helicopter,” Stu said determinedly, shaking his head. “I won’t go.”
“Please,” Ali begged. “We need you on the ground to sort things out.”
“Send Cami,” Stu said. “She can do everything I can do . . . well, almost everything. And if something turns up that stumps her, as long as she has my tool kit and a video camera, I can walk her through whatever needs to be done”
Stu reached under his desk and pulled out a worn leather bag that TV’s Marcus Welby, MD, might have dragged along with him on house calls back in the sixties.
“Trust me,” he said, handing the bag over to Cami. “Most everything you need is in there, except for the RFID reader itself. My cloner’s in there, too, by the way.”
“Really?” Cami said, brightening. “You’re going to turn me loose with your cloner?”
Ali knew the cloner to be a piece of specialized cell phone duplicating equipment that Stu had never before allowed out of his personal possession.
“I’m pretty sure you’re trustworthy,” Stu said. “In fact, I’m sure of it.”
After Stu’s ringing endorsement of Cami’s capabilities, Ali realized that both she and B. had been overruled and outmaneuvered.
“So much for not being able to give a haircut over the phone,” she said with a grin in B.’s direction. “I guess they’re possible these days after all. All right, Cami,” she added, turning to the young woman. “I guess that other club sandwich belongs to you. Wheels up in five.”
• • •
Right around five thirty, with the horizon slowly brightening in the east, Dave Hollicker sought out Joanna and shook an evidence bag in front of her face. “Hey, boss,” he said gleefully, “we’ve got some.”
“Some what?” Joanna echoed. “Bullets, I hope.”
“Yup. Five so far, and we’ll probably find more.”
“What kind of bullets?”
“They’re 7.62 NATO rounds,” Dave answered. “That means we’re most likely looking for an AK-47.”
“That news doesn’t exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy,” Joanna told him.
“Me neither.”
“Anything else?”
“A broken Garmin GPS, a cell phone that’s smashed to pieces and dead as a doornail, a crack pipe, a wallet with fifteen hundred dollars in it in cash. There’s also a California driver’s license belonging to one Fredrico Arturo Gomez with an address in Bakersfield, California.”
“So we have a pretty good idea of who our victim is, then?” Joanna asked.
“No such luck,” Dave replied. “When I ran the license, it turned out to be phony and so was the address.”
“So either he’s an illegal, a crook, or both?”
“That’s about the size of it. Once the ME collects his print
s, we may get a hit on one of those. With the crack pipe in play, most likely this isn’t his first rodeo, and his prints will be in the system.”
The radio on the shoulder of Joanna’s uniform squawked awake. “Sheriff Brady,” Armando Ruiz barked in her ear. “The SCRs are here asking what you want them to do.”
Joanna’s watch said six A.M. sharp as she started back up the steep embankment. George Winfield and his band of eight eager-beaver reservists stood at the ready. Gathered around a nine-passenger minivan, they were busy examining the metal detectors they had just been issued.
“We’re ready to go to work,” George told her. “What do you want us to do?”
“This is a shooting that was not random. We’re operating on the assumption that the victim was deliberately targeted. We’re looking for shell casings, folks, a whole bunch of shell casings. We’ve had vehicles driving back and forth all morning, and no one has spotted anything on the pavement. That suggests that the shooter was off the roadway somewhere, maybe hiding in the brush, and waiting for our victim to pass by. I want you to start from where the truck went through the guardrail and then, using the metal detectors, work your way back, searching both sides of the highway both visually and with the detectors.
“I’m asking for a systematic, inch-by-inch scan from the edge of the pavement out to the fence line and back again. If you find casings, do not touch them or move them. Call George immediately so he can notify one of my CSIs to come take charge of the evidence. And if you see any recent shoe prints or tire prints near the casings—or anywhere else, for that matter—please avoid obliterating them if at all possible.”
As the SCRs set off to do her bidding, Joanna stood between the torn pieces of guardrail and stared down at the scene, convinced that she’d made the right call. With the number of holes in the truck—in both the cab and the bed—there had to be dozens of casings out there somewhere. The fact that Agent Cannon had been on the scene summoning assistance such a short time after the crash meant the shooter wouldn’t have had time to hang around collecting his brass. Information gleaned from that might well lead back to both the weapon in question as well as the shooter.