A Taxing Death (Jill Quint, MD, Forensic Pathologist Series Book 5)

by Peche, Alec

  "Anna, my gut feeling which nearly is always accurate in predicting the direction of a murder case, is telling me it's not your family, which is why I am not focusing there first. But I would be a bad investigator if I found nothing at his place of employment, then failed to look at your family. Twenty-five percent of victims are killed by a family member and another fifty-four percent know their killer; maybe it is a friend, a co-worker, or a neighbor. Are you asking me to not investigate your family if I don't find clues elsewhere?"

  Anna paused for a moment, shifting through all of their family members, unable to pick a killer out of the bunch of them and so said with resolve, "If you must investigate my family, do so. I need to find Manuel's murderer."

  She looked at her children as if seeking their agreement and nodded when she saw it.

  Jill looked at her watch and said, "I need to get going to meet Detective Chang. Michael and Christina what are your schedules for the remainder of the week? Are you going to be here or are you returning to your homes?"

  Michael replied, "We both took a leave of absence from work for three weeks. So we'll be staying with Mom for another two weeks. Why?"

  "I'll want to interview you more as I gather more material on your dad and so I wanted to know if I could contact you here. It just makes life simpler. If this is a good time, I would propose we meet here tomorrow at the same time to go over what I have found," Jill suggested as she stood up and began replacing her notes in her briefcase.

  "That works perfectly," Anna agreed. "Expect breakfast and coffee when you arrive."

  "I would tell you not to bother, but I know what it is like to be near a great cook, you can't resist cooking for anyone that is a guest in your home. I don't enjoy cooking and my cupboards and refrigerator are relatively empty. My friend Nathan knows he has to bring all supplies when he plans to cook in my kitchen. I would rather experiment with organic moth killer spray than with food."

  With a rusty laugh, Anna showed Jill to the front door and she departed in her car heading for the downtown area where the detective was housed. The Sacramento Police Headquarters were not in the area of the Capitol Building; it was about six miles south. A little farther than Jill wanted to walk on a day where the temperature might reach one-hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Instead she would look for covered parking to avoid her car baking in the direct sun. Once she arrived at the building and saw no covered parking, the best she could hope for was a tree to give her shade.

  Chapter Five

  After presenting herself at the front desk, she was escorted back to the cubicle area of the detective division. She had researched the police department before she set out this morning. She knew there was a total of 150 personnel working in the investigation unit - both detectives and forensic specialists. She also knew that this location was one of four police stations for the city. She wasn't sure how the forensic analysis was handled as there were both State and County crime labs in addition to the city of Sacramento Police crime lab. Some of the lab was likely a duplication among the jurisdictions, but there might be unique components to each as well.

  After a journey of one flight up and perhaps half the length of the building, Jill and her escort arrived at a door announcing it as the Detective Division and she soon thereafter arrived at a space occupied by Detective Chang. Jill held her hand out and said "Thanks for meeting with me, Detective."

  "Before we start, can you show me your contract with the family?" replied Detective Chang.

  Jill quickly pulled out her contract wherein the language was quite clear that she was authorized to speak on behalf of the family, and examine any and all evidence. Furthermore, she showed the detective her shiny new private detective license. She had finally decided she should get the license and had taken the exam a few weeks prior.

  "Great thanks for getting their written permission, saves us both time. I've worked with other private detectives over the years but you're rather unique in that you come from a medical examiner background. I have Mr. Valencia's file here and I'll go over it with you."

  "Do you have a murder board set up for him? I would love to see that first if you have it."

  "We keep our murder boards in a separate area so that visitors to this section are not greeted by the sometimes grisly pictures of a murder scene. Why don't you have a seat here," said the detective, "while I go retrieve that murder board and wheel it over here?"

  Jill did as advised and looked around the cubicle in the short time the detective was gone. She saw no information on the case that she might take a picture of to look at later. He was soon rolling a white board into the opening of his cubicle. Jill took a first glance at it to determine if she thought the detective might have removed some information from the board. She didn't think so as there were no obvious spaces where a document might have been. He could have moved things around to cover an empty space, but she didn't think he had time. Regardless she asked him.

  "Is this everything on your murder board? I mean you didn't remove anything thinking it would put me off?"

  With a sigh the detective said, "No I didn't remove anything. I haven't hid anything from you or Mrs. Valencia."

  "I didn't think you had removed anything but nevertheless, I had to ask. How many cases are you working on at the moment?" Jill asked in an absent-minded fashion while studying the board.

  "I have four other cases besides this one."

  "Are they all murders, or are some other felonies involved?"

  "One other murder case and the remaining three cases are robberies."

  "Which case is taking the majority of your time?"

  "Mr. Valencia's murder, but only because there are so many agencies involved - the California Highway Patrol, the Governor's Office, the County Sheriff as they have a piece of the crime lab, and the State Crime Lab. I lose a fair amount of time working between the agencies."

  "I can imagine the politics involved with all of these agencies. As I read your murder board, you have no suspects so far. Is that correct?"

  "That's correct. That is good news for the family as none of them were a standout for the murder of Mr. Valencia. The bad news is of course how difficult it is to track down these two ambulance drivers."

  "Will you show me the footage or better still can you email a file containing the specific time period?"

  "The files are too big to email. Do you have a flash drive I can copy them onto for you?"

  Jill searched her briefcase found the flash drive and passed it over to the detective. A minute later, after downloading the video clip he passed it back to her.

  "Were you able to identify the men in the video? I assume given the distance they traveled from outside to Manuel's office, that several different cameras caught their activity."

  "Yes we did have them on several different camera angles. Their uniforms were authentic although I doubt the ambulance was as it had no markings of an ambulance company owner and the license plates belonged to a 2005 Toyota Camry.”

  "Do you know where the ambulance went after leaving the Capitol? Were you able to see it on cameras around the city? Do you have cameras on the streets of Sacramento?" asked Jill. It seemed like every city nowadays had some degree of cameras focused on its streets.

  "We do have cameras on some streets and in particular on streets around the Capitol building. We followed the ambulance on camera until it left the Capitol building zone. Once you get outside of that zone, cameras are sporadically placed, and it would take a lot of man hours to look at all of those cameras to determine a path and I'm not sure it would tell us anything in the end."

  Jill was taking notes while the detective spoke. His last sentence sort of rubbed her the wrong way. She felt he wasn't devoting due diligence to all angles of the investigation by ignoring cameras that might tell the police where the ambulance went after it left the Capitol building. Perhaps Detective Chang's diligence into investigating the departure of the ambulance more reflected his total workload rather than a lack of desi
re to follow up on all possible leads.

  Jill inquired, "Do you know who manages those cameras? I'd love to follow the ambulance on tape and I'll share the data with you."

  "Sure, his name is George Fellows and he is at the street maintenance yard over on 24th Street."

  "Great, thanks for the name," Jill said. "Back to the question about suspects, have you finished interviewing the family?"

  "No. It's a big family; he had six siblings and she nine, and three of the four grandparents on both sides are alive."

  "Have you interviewed co-workers? Christina Valencia mentioned an 'Amanda', who was her father's assistant. I think there was also his supervisor at the Capitol that notified Anna Valencia of her husband's death. Have you had the chance to interview them?"

  "I interviewed Amanda last week and what she described matched the footage on the Capitol cameras. The supervisor was on vacation and we're scheduled to meet this afternoon. I had a brief discussion with him and so I don't expect anything to come out of that interview."

  "Do you know if the California Highway Patrol is following up on any leads separate from what you are pursuing?"

  "They don't share with me everything that they're working on in this case so I'm not sure what leads they're following up on at this point. The officer working the case in their office is Detective Randy Banks."

  Jill was running out of questions to ask Detective Chang. It felt like he ran into barriers in dealing with the California Highway Patrol on this case and for whatever reason did not push beyond those barriers. The situation brought up one more question for Jill.

  "Detective, can you explain the jurisdictional boundaries with this case? Does the investigation belong to the California Highway Patrol because it happened inside the Capitol building and the Sacramento police are the secondary agency because the murder happened in the city of Sacramento? I'm just not sure who the lead agency is in the murder of Mr. Valencia."

  "There is a problem with jurisdiction and each agency has a legal right to take the lead role. As you can imagine this leads to confusion and both agencies want their prospective detectives to solve the case. To the best of my knowledge, my counterpart in the Highway Patrol has never investigated a murder simply because there hasn't been one before in our Capitol building."

  Jill's first thought was that Anna Valencia had made a great decision to hire her as these two very competent agencies were likely stymied by the role confusion in this case and the agency with seemingly the greatest number of facts about the case had little to no experience in investigating murder. Certainly this would make it challenging to collect information. Jill felt like she understood the position that Detective Chang was in but she would reserve judgment until she met with Randy Banks of the Highway Patrol. Once she and Detective Chang were done with their conversation, she stepped outside of the building and immediately placed a call to Detective Banks. It was the little things that could trip up an official investigation. She scheduled an appointment with the detective that afternoon. Checking her watch, she figured she had an hour before her appointment with John Steward and it was a fifteen minute drive to the Capitol building. She would have to think about a line of questioning related to Manuel's work. She hadn't eliminated friends and family as the source of the murderer, but her gut said it was related to work as usually murderous co-workers or customers did their killing at the workplace.

  Given the equipment involved in this murder: an ambulance, a gurney, an old defibrillator, and the uniforms, Jill deduced that this was a well-planned, expensive, and well-executed scheme. It was not a crime of passion; instead someone went to a lot of trouble to kill Manuel while making it look like his own heart was the cause of his death. The killer made certain assumptions about the forensic evidence left behind. If the killer was a co-worker, then this might be his one and only target. If the killer was a customer, then there might be several targets on his list. She would ask Mr. Steward about any other employee deaths as part of her investigation.

  Jill was soon pulling into a garage near the Capitol. She had about a two-hour break between the two scheduled interviews and she hoped to be allowed into Mr. Valencia's office and be able to speak to his assistant, Amanda. From what the police said, her earlier statement matched what was seen on the security cameras, but perhaps she might know about any threats made in the office. As she walked towards the Capitol, she looked around for a place to eat lunch between interviews. Looking at her choices as she walked down the street, she settled on returning to a little café that looked like it had excellent sandwiches and Wi-Fi. She wanted to do some research on the Highway Patrol's responsibility for the Capitol. Her stride soon had her arriving at the security station at the Capitol wherein, just like the airport, you had to pass your belongings and yourself through a metal detector and security scanner. From there, she was directed to the stairs to find Mr. Steward's office.

  Jill presented herself to an assistant sitting inside the door marked Jon Steward, Head of Income, Sales, and Excise Tax. She soon found herself in the inner office.

  "Hello, Mr. Steward, I am Jill Quint, a private consultant hired by the Valencia family to investigate Manuel Valencia's death. I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me today."

  "Hello, Jill. Manuel's murder is about the strangest and saddest thing I have ever come across in my career. The day I had to tell Mrs. Valencia that her husband was dead in his office was the worst day of my work life. Finding out the next day that he was murdered was the second worse day of my work life. To have his life taken away from him when he likely had a few more decades left is terrible. What can I do for you? I have already provided information to Detective Banks."

  "As I understand it, you arrived on scene well after the time that Mr. Valencia died?"

  "Yes, that is true. He had been dead maybe thirty to forty-five minutes when I arrived to his office. I had been in a meeting elsewhere and between the time it took the folks in his office to call and for me to be located, and finally to walk over to Manuel's office, some time elapsed."

  "I know you have probably been over the scene several time for various reports, but if you would, please tell me about the scene from the moment you began walking down the hallway towards Mr. Valencia's office."

  With a sigh Mr. Steward began his description of the scene, "I approached Manuel's office door. There was a guard standing outside of the office who asked me what my business was. When I explained, he stepped aside and allowed me to enter. I entered the office to find Amanda, Manuel's assistant, inside with two other officers, my assistant was also there, providing comfort to Amanda. There was little conversation occurring; rather there was an uncomfortable silence that came and went with the cloud cover of grief. I continued on into Manuel's office where he was lying flat on his back, shirt open, completely leeched of all color and to my untrained eye, dead. Someone in the room said that the paramedics had pronounced him dead and that they should wait for the medical examiner to come pick his body up. I really didn't know what to do at the time, how to be a leader. I asked Amanda when the coroner would be there to pick up Manuel. That gave her something to do and so she called the coroner's office to find out when they would be there. They looked through their logs and then told her that they had no notification about a Manuel Valencia at the Capitol building. Amanda passed the receiver over to one of the officers who said he was on-scene and that there was indeed a need for them to pick-up the body as it would be a coroner's case.

  "My assistant was working with HR to look at next of kin notification. We all assumed that his wife Anna would be the emergency contact, but we needed to make sure that that was what we had on record. Amanda then verified that Mrs. Valencia was in the building that housed her firm's offices and an officer and I made arrangements to visit her and give her the bad news. Once her assistant took Mrs. Valencia home, we returned here and by then the coroner had come and gone and the room was empty. I sent Amanda home and worked with HR on some paperwork for te
rminating his employment. I know that sounds cold, but it was the most important thing I could do to assist Mrs. Valencia in getting access to any and all benefits that she was entitled to. I always observed Manuel to be deeply enamored of his wife, and I think he would've wanted me to attend to her needs first."

  "Sounds like a very tough day and one that you don't receive training for as most of us will never have to do for an employee what you had to do for Manuel Valencia. At the time of the event, did anything get stuck in your head as being weird or inconsistent in the story of what happened to Mr. Valencia?"

  "I thought the whole pacemaker thing was weird. Here was a guy actively doing his job, speaking aloud to his assistant and these paramedics arrive and in the next moment, he is dead. I know two other people with pacemakers and I told each of them the story and warned them to never let a paramedic get close to them. My friends thought the story was strange and each of them contacted their doctor the next day to find out if anyone was monitoring their pacemaker and they were both assured that their pacemakers were not transmitting to some central source. Perhaps because Manuel had had a pacemaker for so long, his was not the latest and greatest in technology."

  "When I first heard of this case I thought perhaps I was not up to date on pacemaker technology and so I reviewed the most popular models on the market," Jill commented."None of them communicate with the central computer that monitors their heart waves; it was a creative excuse to get close enough to Mr. Valencia to do him grievous harm. As an aside several years ago there was concern that hackers could hack into Vice President Cheney's pacemaker and kill him. So the manufacturer made some changes to his pacemaker that prevented it from wirelessly connecting to anything. Was there anything else you thought unusual about this case?"

  "Before I knew this was a murder investigation, we had begun to research how the paramedics arrived without advance notice to the Capitol police. We encourage our employees to call 9-1-1 dispatch for an emergency, and dispatch always notifies the Capitol police as we have automatic defibrillators in the hallways that they're trained to use. So we were researching the breakdown in communication only to find out that 9-1-1 dispatch was never in the loop. I think those are the only two things that stuck out as being unusual."