A Breck Death (Jill Quint, MD, Forensic Pathologist Series Book 3)

by Peche, Alec

  "Yeah Jo, I want to thank you for offering Jill that sage advice,” agreed Nathan. “Especially since I've been the one to most benefit from it.”

  "That's my other part-time job. I'm confidante to my friends and I dispense advice when asked.”

  All of a sudden they noticed that Morgan had tensed. Jo, who was standing next to her, followed her glance to the door.

  "Looks like trouble, and don’t turn around and stare,” whispered Morgan. “If I'm not mistaken, the guy on the right is our Mr. Brown. I would like Mr. Brown to remain oblivious that we are on to him.” He was growing a beard which was different from the pictures on the ski slope and at the ticket booth, but the scar still gave him away.

  Jill decided to perform her favorite acting job; she turned around and faked a sneeze. Anyone that knew about sneezes would recognize it as a fake because Jill’s eyes were wide open during the sneeze, something that was impossible to do during a real sneeze. She got a good look at Mr. Brown and his companion, before turning back and engaging with the group.

  “I agree with Morgan, it’s Mr. Brown. We really need a picture of the two of them. Angela, how about if you try to take Nathan’s and my picture, but you enlarge the frame to capture the two guys behind us - it will be all about getting a clear picture of those two with Nathan and I just an excuse to shoot in their direction. You could also take Marie and Jo’s picture doing the same thing and it will be a better decoy if everyone’s picture at the table is taken.”

  “Sounds like an excellent plan,” said Angela. “I knew there was a reason for me to travel to Colorado! Better still, my camera has a panoramic setting on it so I’ll be sure to capture them a few times.”

  Angela spent the next few minutes lining everyone up and shooting their pictures. She could check her camera’s viewfinder so she knew she had several shots of the two men.

  Jill asked Morgan while Angela was shooting pictures, “Where is the FBI surveillance crew for this guy?”

  “Good question, I thought Jake had them in place. Let me text him and find out.”

  A few minutes later she had her answer. Mr. Brown was not at any of his usual spots so the surveillance team had been unable to track him. “They are on their way to this bar and Jake wants us to engage the guys if they try to leave.”

  “Engage them? Engage with an FBI Most Wanted killer?” asked Jill.

  Angela suggested, “How about if I walk over to them and ask them to take a group shot of us?”

  “Do you have another camera they can use? Those are the only pictures we have of the guys. If they take off or damage the camera, we’ll have nothing,” challenged Jill.

  “I’ll use my cell phone and tell them we want to upload to Facebook.”

  “Sounds like a plan, go for it,” approved Jill.

  Morgan could not believe the nerve of these women. To walk over to someone and hand them your cell phone when you know that they shot someone five times in the head was a pretty ballsy move.

  Angela walked over and with a friendly smile and holding out her cellphone to Mr. Brown asked, “Excuse me, but would you take a group picture of the seven of us? We are hardly ever all in the same place at the same time. We need to memorialize it with a picture.”

  Angela did a silent cheer when Mr. Brown grabbed the phone ready to take a group shot. They all had big grins for the picture because they were so pleased with Angela’s ploy to ensure that the men stayed in the bar. Soon the picture was taken and Angela walked back to the men pulling on her gloves as she walked.

  “Thanks for your help, we appreciate the picture,” Angela said to the two men as she received her phone back. Then looking them in the eye, she held up one of the gloved hands and said, “Burr it's cold in here.”

  Walking back to her table, she stopped next to Morgan and whispered "do you have an evidence bag?”

  “What do you need one for?”

  “I got his fingerprints on the phone and I’m trying very hard not to smudge them,” said a smug Angela.

  “OMG! Why didn’t I think of that? No I don’t have a bag in my possession at the moment. Let me think what I could use instead.”

  “No worries, I already have a solution.” Angela pointed to the popcorn machine in the corner. She walked over to the machine and started to fill a bag with the freshly popped popcorn. She held an empty bag in her other palm when she brought the popcorn bag back to the table. Making sure her body was blocking any view by the two men, she slipped her cell phone into the empty popcorn bag hoping that she had just preserved the fingerprints.

  “Wow, that was excellent detective work! If there was such a thing I would make sure you received the FBI’s citizen’s award for crime stopping.”

  “Just doing my job as a citizen, so I would have passed on your imaginary award,” Angela disclosed.

  “Okay now what do we do?” Lamented Jo. “I need to pee after all this alcohol and water, and I’m ready to return to the hotel to sleep. Is your surveillance team in place? Can we leave now?”

  “Let me text Jake to find out.”

  “Okay, I am going to use the restroom here while you get an answer,” said Jo.

  A few moments later, she said yes the team was in place and they could leave. Once Jo returned from the bathroom, everyone began putting on their coats and making the motions of putting on hats, and mittens and they headed for the door. Exiting the bar, they began their walk up the street. It was about a nine or ten block walk to their hotel. They had another two blocks to go when they looked back to see a giant snowplow heading their way. The city often cleaned the streets at night after the tourist traffic ended, but there was no recent snow and nothing around them needing plowing services.

  They started moving faster, discussing their options.

  “How about if we run back to the hotel,” suggested Marie.

  “A plow can have a speed of up to twenty miles per hour, so we can’t out run it,” replied Nathan.

  “Is there another building we can duck into to?” asked Jo.

  “No, just pretty much open field these last two blocks,” replied Jill. “We could backtrack and duck into a doorway but we risk being crushed by the bucket on the plow.”

  “How about your surveillance team? Can they come to our rescue?” asked Nick.

  “They must not realize what is going on and I don’t have time to text Jake.”

  Jill had visited Breck so often that she had the town memorized, “There is a bridge up ahead. We can all run down the slope at the beginning of the bridge and huddle underneath it, even if the plow follows us off road and down the slope, the plow won’t fit underneath the bridge. Follow me.”

  Jill had to shout those last words as the plow was getting much closer and louder. She took off on a run and stepped over the railing, and then headed downhill to the underpass. It fit the seven of them quite well. Everyone was breathing fast and their feet were a little wet and cold, but otherwise they were safe. They heard the snow plow continuing overhead. The plow driver had to have seen them take the off-road path. They waited and the plow just seemed to be idling at the other side of the bridge.

  “The driver could have run off or he may be coming underneath for us,” advised Morgan her Glock in hand. They listened for movement but couldn’t hear anything over the idling plow. “I’m going to text Jake and see where the surveillance team is.”

  Angela was doing a slow motion stomping dance trying to get the blood to her feet. She had ankle high boots on, but had stepped in some kind of wetness, probably soft snow and now her feet were freezing. Nick motioned her over to a concrete wall ledge that was a part of the overpass. She hopped up and he took off one shoe, then the other and took her frozen feet in his warm hands. She almost moaned with the heat finally reaching her feet.

  “Jake texted back he is on his way here,” Morgan notified the group. “The snowplow driver was indeed our Mr. Brown and the surveillance team notified Jake that he left the plow, engine running at the far side
of the bridge. As they were behind him, they had no idea that we were in danger. He has left the area presently.”

  “My feet are frozen, although not nearly as frozen as they were before, thanks to Nick! Still, I can't wait to get back to the hotel to submerse them in hot water," said Angela, as she replaced her wet sock and boot.

  They all hiked up the embankment to the road where they could see Jake coming toward them.

  Nick said to the group, “I’m going to get Angela home so she can get her feet warmed up. The rest of you can fill in the story for Jake,” and he hustled Angela toward the hotel. She yelled over her shoulder, “Don’t forget to tell him about the pictures I took!”

  Jake arrived at the group and said “tell me what happened.”

  “Look some of us have frozen wet feet,” said Jill shivering. “Let’s detail what happened on this road and then let’s quickly head for the hotel and we’ll tell you the rest of the story.”

  Jake looked around the group and saw that three of the four women were shivering. Probably a combination of cold feet, adrenaline rush, and just the cold night air.

  “We left the bar where Mr. Brown entered to watch us. It’s about a nine or ten block walk with the final two to three blocks just open space. The snow plow came from there,” said Marie pointing to where they had first noticed it. “It clearly was aiming for us. Nathan informed us the top speed of the plow was twenty miles per hour so we knew we couldn’t outrun it. Fortunately, Jill knows this town really well and she knew if we went down that embankment and stood in this bridge’s underpass that the plow couldn’t reach us so that is exactly what we did. The plow missed turning us into asphalt by about twenty yards. The plow continued cross the bridge and then he deserted it there. Now I am too cold to stand here anymore, see you back at the hotel.”

  Just like that the three women and Nathan left Jake and a shivering Morgan standing there on the bridge. Jake knew when he was beat. Looking over at Morgan he said “You’re shivering; let’s hustle back to the hotel.” He peppered her with questions on the return and he had to agree with their decision making in the bar and to avoid the snowplows. At least she had her gun ready if someone had chased them under the bridge.

  Fifteen minutes later the women had changed clothes, warmed up their feet, and were sipping tea. Angela had connected her camera to her laptop, and now they were all standing around her looking at the pictures of the two men. Nick was sitting next to her on a sofa holding Henrik’s laptop containing the facial recognition software. She had emailed the picture to him and now they were quietly awaiting an identification of that second man. There was silence in the room as everyone watched Nick’s computer icon spinning as it searched.

  “How long does this take?” said Jake impatiently.

  Giving him a cool look over his shoulder, Nick said “three to five minutes. It’s been forty-five seconds so far.” There was a tinge in Nick’s voice that said ‘you idiot, do you know how lucky you are to have access to this software?’

  Jill, who had huge faith in Henrik’s technology, looked over at Jake, and said, “Chill”.

  After a few more minutes a match was found. They looked into the face of Evgeniy Bogachev. Additional photos with the man were offered for them to view. Nick brought up the additional photos and they all agreed that he was the man that had accompanied Mr. Brown into the bar.

  “Who is he?" asked Jo.

  "It seems that in addition to Mr. Sundin, we have a second cybercriminal involved in this case,” Nick read. “He is a Russian who has been indicted as the website administrator behind Gameover and Zeus.”

  "What are Gameover and Zeus?” asked Marie. “They sound like illegal drugs.”

  “Well no. They are actually cybercrime software programs that send unsuspecting emails to victims,” explained Jake. “Once those victims click on a link they go to a website that installs malware on the victim’s computer stealing bank codes and passwords. These two software programs are credited with bilking hundreds of millions of dollars from bank accounts.”

  “I’m going to get this creep’s name to Henrik’s engineer who is searching for the source of the chairlift failure,” said Nick.

  “Jake, did your men say who was driving the plow?” asked Jill. “Did both men get in it to start it up?”

  “They said both men got in the plow. Why?”

  “Good then you have them both for attempted murder.”

  "I was so cold I couldn't think. I forgot to give you my cell phone. Let me go get it,” said Angela hopping off the couch.

  "We all forgot about Angela’s phone! Whoops,” exclaimed Marie.

  Angela returned to the living room, cell phone in a paper bag held by the tips of her fingers. “Jake, I got Mr. Brown's fingerprints on the cell phone. I think that's just another piece of evidence of his involvement in a series of crimes. Do you want the phone?"

  “As you said, this will be one more piece of evidence to identify Mr. White as Mr. Brown. No one has told me the story of what happened inside the bar. You also failed to mention that you collected fingerprints. How'd you do it?"

  "It was a flash of brilliance on Angela's part," Jill replied. "We wanted to preserve the pictures that we had in her camera. She walked over to him and asked if he would take a photograph of us so she could upload it immediately to Facebook and he agreed. So he reached for the phone and then held it securely between his fingers as he took the shot."

  "You guys are really quite fearless and you're starting to scare me," observed Jake shaking his head. "You walked up to a man that you know is wanted for murder, handed him this phone and asked him to take a picture of you all with the express purpose of getting his fingerprints.”

  "Hey, you wanted us to stall him there while your team got in place. We were in a public area; it wasn't like he was going to get mad and shoot me with everyone else in the bar.”

  "No, instead, he tried to flatten you with the snow plow.”

  “I think he would have tried that anyways," Angela declared. "Especially since he has already tried to kill some of us in this room."

  "Touché," said Jake finally giving up on getting the civilians to worry about their own safety.

  "Guys, I am tired and I am going to head to bed,” Marie announced. “Tomorrow I want to spend some time skiing. Since I'm an early riser, I'll put in several hours of research before the lifts open. If I have reception on the mountain, I'll do some more research with my smart phone on any breaks that I take, and then I'll get a few more hours of research tomorrow night. Night everyone."

  There was a chorus of ‘good nights’.

  Jo decided to follow Marie's direction and also headed for her bedroom.

  Angela and Nick decided they wanted to share a glass of wine outside on the hotel’s balcony. After a little fresh air and some time alone, they might return to look at video clips or give it up and head for their bedrooms.

  Jill was tired but she wanted to make a few notes of where she wanted her team to go next in the morning. Nathan, the night owl of the group proceeded to usher Jake and Morgan out of the suite with advice that they could return at six in the morning when some of the suite's occupants would be awake. In a matter of fifteen minutes, the suite’s living room was cleared of occupants. Nathan debated joining Jill in bed, but he thought that she might already be asleep. He, on the other hand, was not sleepy in the least. He hadn't quite got over the adrenaline rush of trying to avoid the snow plow. He would put in a few hours of work and then head to bed. These adventures with Jill were getting more dangerous; he thought back to the time when an Albanian sniper had entered Jill's house in the middle of the night and he had dispatched the sniper with some hapkido kicks. So maybe these adventures weren't escalating in danger. Perhaps he just preferred to die from a single bullet over being crushed to death by a snow plow - it sounded much more painful. With that cheery thought he pulled out his sketchbook and began examining a wine label that was his current work in progress.
r />   Chapter Eleven

  As usual Marie and Jill were the first ones awake in the suite. They had coffee and were nibbling on breakfast. A text arrived from Jake asking if she was awake yet. She sent him an affirmative response and went back to contemplating the murder board. Moments later, she heard a knock on the door.

  Standing at the closed door she asked, "Who is it?" This hotel like many, had installed the peephole above the level of her eyes in her head rendering it worthless for security.

  "Jake and Morgan."

  "What was our main course last night?”

  With a sigh, she heard Morgan respond, “Sea bass.”

  Jill opened the door, telling the agents the location of breakfast or coffee.

  "I'm surprised you asked me those questions before opening the door."

  "Why?"

  "Because you seem rather reckless with your own security."

  "If you're going to be snarky this early in the morning then you can return to your own suite and we will talk to each other via e-mail."

  "In that case, I’ll quit with the sarcasm till noon."

  The three women were united in rolling their eyes. Jill was beginning to suspect that Jake was not a morning person. She would take it slow and easy until he pumped sufficient caffeine into his system.

  "What happened with our suspects overnight?" Jill probed. "Did they try to plow down anyone else?”

  "My surveillance team changes shift within the hour and I'll have the report shortly thereafter. Did the German engineer get back to us as to the possibility of Sundin or Bogachev being behind the ski lift breach? Tampering with a ski lift is an additional federal felony charge, so it is very critical to link these guys to the chairlift failure.”

  "Unfortunately he would be responding to Nick and he's still asleep. I'm sure he'll check his messages as soon as he awakens. I’ve been thinking about the case this morning, and I want to understand what these two computer nerds could do to assist a clinical trials company. I don't think that they were hired to take me out after Joseph was murdered. I just bet they're doing something illegal with RMCT’s computers. Furthermore, I think Joseph was murdered because he discovered whatever they were doing and when he discreetly questioned RMCT, they discreetly killed him.”