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

by Peche, Alec

  "Also if you look into my background, you know that I've successfully worked with other law enforcement agencies. What you may not know is I have a team of experts from out-of-state that normally help me on a case like this. As each of their skill sets comes up perhaps we can discuss at that point whether you have an internal expert or whether you want to pay my experts to get the work done."

  "That sounds like the plan and we will cross each bridge as we come to it."

  Jill took a minute to read over the contract and sign it. She also took a moment to e-mail Anna Valencia about the new arrangement. She received a quick reply that Anna was onboard although she joked that Jill had gone to long lengths to avoid having her in her kitchen the next day. Jill smiled with the thought that Anna Valencia was such a kind woman.

  Lieutenant Moss, with the contractual relationships dealt with, moved on to discussion of where they were with the case, "Dr. Quint, we were able to gather most of the employees last night for an emergency briefing on this case. We have bused the employees to a casino in Reno until we catch this killer."

  Jill queried, "Just the employees? I had the Valencias increase their security as I didn't know if the killer had a list of targets strictly composed of employees or if they intended to move beyond the employees to family members, and please call me Jill."

  "We did not think that the family members were targets, but to be on the safe side we offered to move children and spouses with the employees. Some of them took us up on the offer and so we have the entire family in Reno, others had no immediate family in the region and thus were not worried and a third group had spouses that couldn't afford to take time off work and so they've stayed behind in this region."

  "You said, 'most of the employees'. Were you unable to make contact with some of the employees?" Jill asked, a little puzzled, a little concerned.

  "We have three employees that are not in Reno with the larger group. Two of the employees are on vacation and they have agreed to stay a few extra days and check with us before returning to Sacramento. One employee, we have been unable to contact and we are concerned. He returned from vacation two nights ago and failed to show up for work yesterday and we've been unable to reach him on all known numbers."

  "Did you search his home?" Jill probed.

  "I have officers on their way there now," said the lieutenant with the sound of his voice conveying hope that they would find the gentleman alive.

  "What about Mr. Steward? Do you think he could be a target?”

  "We're not sure. He decided to visit family in Southern California for the time being."

  "So what leads are you following at the moment?" Jill asked, ready to move on to the actual investigation.

  "We spent a good part of the last twelve hours securing the safety of the employees," and Jill heard the exhaustion in Lieutenant Moss's voice. "We have a running list on the right side of the whiteboard of what we need to follow-up on. We were adding to that list when you arrived."

  "Can we back up a moment and discuss suspects?" Jill requested. "I think if we have motives and suspects that it will drive certain tasks."

  "Okay," replied Lieutenant Moss in a tone that said he was already regretting inviting Jill to the table. "We think the killers are people who are unhappy with the service provided by the Audit Division. So I think we can narrow it down to someone who pays California taxes."

  "Individuals, or corporations?" Jill asked.

  "Individuals as these two guys don't seem to be acting on behalf of a corporation, although it's always possible. It also must be someone who was audited as they are the only clients handled by the Audit Division. If you are unhappy about anything regarding your taxes and contact the Department, your complaint will go to our Taxpayers' Rights Division."

  "So then knowing these limits, the suspect pool is at least one-thousand people after you remove females from that pool?" Jill calculated."How many letters has the audit division received in the last two years? This feels like a very methodical killing, well-planned and well-rehearsed, and the ambulance and defibrillator took time to buy and modify. Do you have a list of taxpayers who communicated by letter, phone, or email with the audit division over the last two years?"

  "We don't, but we have an intern in the department as we speak creating a spreadsheet of those communications," replied the Lieutenant. "The problem for that intern is the phone calls. We record all calls and save the tapes for a year only. It means listening to countless hours of tape to get taxpayer names and then having to find a taxpayer's contact information which is more difficult if we don't have a social security number on the tape and are looking at a common name like John Smith or Jose Garcia. Compiling this list will take some time."

  "I can imagine that the process you describe is laborious. I would focus on the first two victims' correspondence," Jill mused. "Since Manuel Valencia was the head of the unit that suggests to me these killers communicated with others in the audit division, and then when they were not satisfied with the answer, they raised the appeal to Mr. Valencia. It would be worth asking his assistant Amanda if he handled complaints personally or if they only reached his desk upon appeal."

  The lieutenant nodded his agreement with Jill's arithmetic.

  "Let's go to a different angle. These two killers had personal medical information about each victim, information not readily available, information sitting in insurance repositories, and information that takes technical skill to hack in and steal. What company insured the three victims?"

  "What do you mean the killers had personal medical information?" asked a person whose name Jill could not remember; however, she seemed to recall during introductions that this person represented personnel for the Department of Revenue.

  "What we know from witnesses from two of the murder sites is that the killers knew of their victim's heart conditions and used that information to gain compliance and submission by their victims. Not only did they have to gain access to personal medical information, they needed to understand the relevance of those medical conditions. In the third case, they must've known about the victim's strawberry allergy, perhaps used aerosolized strawberry extract to cause an allergic reaction, and then they were conveniently having a meal nearby which allowed them again to gain compliance from the third victim. So I think we need to look to either the insurance company or the physician's office as being a source of stolen medical information. As nearly all of this information is computerized, my guess is that the killers hacked into their insurance records and used that to their advantage. This skill set narrows the pool of killers. I suppose they could have outsourced hacking to some Russian or North Korean computer hacker but I think we should look at suspects with significant computer code experience."

  "I'll go back and check our files to see which insurance company each employee selected," said Jill's unnamed personnel expert. "If they all had different insurance companies, then maybe we need to look at physicians. If I look at this from the killer's point of view, how would I find out which insurance company or physician I had to hack into to find this information? Where else might these employees have listed medical conditions? It is not required for our employer-sponsored health or life insurance. Did they have medical-alert bracelets?"

  "Those are some really good questions because you're correct that you would have been looking for a needle in a haystack to figure out the physician information for each victim," Jill observed. "Let me step outside to call Anna Valencia and find out if Mr. Valencia had a medical-alert bracelet."

  Moments later Jill found herself in the corridor, placing a call to Anna.

  "Hello, Jill, what do you need?" asked Anna. "Did you want to reschedule my visit to your kitchen?"

  "Gosh no," Jill laughed. "A question came up about how the killers got personal medical information on each of their victims. I wondered if you could tell me where Manuel noted that he had a pacemaker. Did he wear a medical-alert bracelet?"

  "He had one, but he had not worn it
for years," Anna disclosed. "Let me give some thought into where else Manuel listed his pacemaker. I don't believe his gym had that information, but I'll check. He did some 5K races occasionally, but I think the only information he had to acknowledge was there was a risk of death with running. I'll talk it over with the kids and send a text to you if we think of anything."

  "Thanks, Anna. By the way I mentioned that we might need to use Michael's services to this group, but I don't know if it will come to that as they should have their own financial resources certainly within the Department of Revenue."

  "I'll let him know, thanks, Jill," and they ended their call.

  Jill returned to the conference room and indicated that Manuel Valencia had a medical-alert bracelet although he had not worn it for years.

  "We could check those companies, but the problem is there is more than one medical-alert company and we would have to search them all. We'll check in with the other two victims' families to see if they had medical-alert bracelets."

  "Dr. Quint, word has come through my office that the husband of the third victim has agreed to exhumation. Are you available to perform the autopsy tomorrow?" asked the representative from the Placer County Sheriff's Department.

  "Yes, just give me an hour's notice of when you'll have the remains delivered to your coroner's office and I can be there. I usually carry an autopsy case in the trunk of my car."

  She saw several people in the room shift as though they had chills running up their spine and felt the need to explain, "Folks, I don't drive around looking at car accidents to see if there is someone I can autopsy. As a consultant, I never know when I am going to get called for an autopsy and it is always with a short turnaround time, so I just need to be prepared. I also reduce mistakes by forgetting to do something during the autopsy; my kit keeps me organized. I also check the case in at the airport if I have to fly somewhere to consult. "

  "Okay," responded Lieutenant Moss. "Let's return to motive and suspects. Can we do anything with the video surveillance from the Capitol and has anyone obtained any additional video from the two restaurant locations?"

  Two other people spoke up in succession, representing police agencies whose names Jill had lost track of, "There wasn't video of the suspects inside the restaurant, but the exterior of the restaurant captured them on film," and "ditto for my restaurant only we captured the two of them exiting the driveway/parking lot in a Ford pick-up with fake plates."

  Jill waited a moment to see if anyone else was going to comment then added, "I have an expert in video imaging and a second expert that manufactures software connected to world-wide databases in facial recognition. If you'll give me the best copy you can create, I'll send it off to my experts."

  Lieutenant Moss looked at Jill suspiciously and finally asked, "Are these legal sources?"

  "Yes to the video guy and I think yes to the facial recognition guy as the FBI, I believe, purchased access to his system, but I can't say for sure as I don't know the law in areas of privacy. It's a company based in Stuttgart, Germany."

  Lieutenant Moss stared at her a moment longer before finally closing with, "You're full of surprises, Dr. Quint."

  “I think this about wraps our conversation for now as everyone has work to do to find these killers. I would propose we meet again tomorrow at 8am.”

  Jill passed out her card to the people that were new to her in the room. She really wanted the video feed to see if Jack and Henrik could do anything with helping to solve who these killers were. It sounded like if they had to chase them down through complaint letters that it would take some time to sift through them all.

  Just as she was about to exit the room, Lieutenant Moss saw that he had an incoming call from Detective Banks and he looked over at Jill and said, “would you mind holding on a minute, Dr. Quint?” and without waiting for her reply he said into his phone “This is Moss. What do you have, Banks?”

  As Jill listened to Moss’s side of the conversation, she deduced that Banks was saying they had entered the employee’s residence and found him or her deceased. Moss soon ended the call, having written something on a piece of paper.

  “Dr. Quint, would you like to join me at the Rossi residence? You can follow me in your car. We would appreciate your assessment of the crime scene.”

  “Sure I can follow you,” Jill agreed and then added since he had taken on a grim edge, “I’m sorry about the loss of your employees.”

  “I’ve never lost an employee to violence of any sort, let alone related to an accounting job, four people with families, who served the state well. We need to find these killers. I think I have the other employees protected; however what if the killers move outside of the Department of Revenue, or start going after family members like Mrs. Valencia? The possibilities are endless. Where are you parked?"

  Jill described the lot she had parked in as the facility was large - a total of 224 acres with many parking lots available to employees and visitors. The lieutenant would meet her at her car and then they would proceed to the crime scene. Fifteen minutes later, Jill was parking behind Lieutenant Moss's car in front of a suburban home, a typical ranch style likely built in the 1950s, and with other vehicles parked on the driveway and street. Jill saw the Sacramento Medical Examiner and a crime scene van. Jill grabbed her autopsy kit from the trunk, not because she expected to do anything inside the home, but rather because she didn't know if she would need a mask or other protective gear in the home. If that was the case, she liked using her own. She rolled the kit behind her toward the house.

  "Before you ask, I am not planning to be the coroner at this scene, rather if asked questions, or if I am in need of protective gear, it's all in the kit."

  "Dr. Quint, you misinterpreted my look. I was admiring whatever decision drove you to keeping it in your trunk on a permanent basis. From what I understand of the scene, we don't need any special protective gear."

  "Thank you Lieutenant, that is good to know."

  While putting on routine protective gear to prevent their own DNA from contaminating the scene, they spoke with Detective Banks.

  "I know nothing about the victim inside," Jill noted. "What can you tell me about the employee - male or female, age, name, cause of death?"

  "It's a male employee, in his forties, and at first glance I don't know what the cause of death is. There is no blood anywhere."

  Jill followed the detective into a bedroom where they found the victim lying on top of his bed, crime scene attendants as well as the coroner in attendance. Jill glanced at the body and guessed the man had been deceased for at least three days.

  The coroner looked up at her and she saw that it was John Garcia behind the mask.

  "Hello, John, what have you determined the cause of death to be?"

  "Hi, Jill, I've only been here five minutes ahead of you and I don't have one yet, and before you ask there are no burn rings on this gentleman, no pacemaker, and the medicine cabinet contains no medications to treat any heart condition. You want to come take a look?"

  The man was fully clothed with his shirt pulled up. There were no signs of violence anywhere on the body. Jill put on her magnifying lenses and asked John if he had noted any injection sites.

  "I hadn't thought that far yet. You can help me do a preliminary search here and I'll do a more extensive search when we get the body back to the morgue."

  In silence they both slowly examined what skin was exposed on the front side of the body. The victim was olive-skinned and the darker pigment could make it harder to see some bruising. They finished finding nothing.

  "Let's turn him over briefly and then we'll get him on the gurney for transport to the morgue," John said and they did just that and the cause of death was still not obvious when they got a look at his backside.

  "Nothing remarkable there either," noted John again. "We'll have to wait to determine the cause of death until we complete the full autopsy. There are no clues that I have found in this house so far to even determine if thi
s was death by natural causes or by homicide."

  Lieutenant Moss came into the bedroom and said "Crime scene technicians have found a tiny webcam on, inside the living room. They're going to take that into custody and see if anything unusual is on it."

  "That's good because in our preliminary on-the-scene examination, we do not have a cause of death for the victim," replied the coroner. "Jill, if you're interested in observing this autopsy, plan on arriving at my office in an hour as it's going to move to the head of the line of pending cases."

  Jill was unsure of where she should go next. She had not had time to put together her plan for investigating this case as she had been overwhelmed by new information this morning. She also wanted to be available to send any video to Jack and then on to Henrik for facial recognition. On the other hand, this looked like an intriguing autopsy as it was rare that the coroner couldn't make a guess as to the cause of death at a crime scene. She thought a little bit more about her priorities and skills and decided she would best serve her client by assisting the coroner in determining the cause of death. He had not asked for her assistance rather he had offered her the opportunity to be an observer, but she could still contribute towards the resolution of the case. Besides she was downright curious about what the actual cause of death was as it was so rare that you couldn't guess at the scene. Had police randomly found the victim, she was sure that they would have thought natural causes as there were no marks on the body or any disturbance of the house. Weird.