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

by Peche, Alec

  "I enlisted out of high school because my family made me do it," Allen asserted. "I had heard of the movement even at that early age and would speak to some of our ideas with my family. They couldn't begin to understand and we ended up fighting a lot. As the end of high school approached, they tried everything to get me to change my way of thinking. They even had me see a psychiatrist. In the end they threatened that they could have me committed to a mental institution unless I enlisted willingly. I don't know if they could have really done that but it scared me enough to enlist and I stayed there for the minimal time of three years, I ended up being trained by them in computer science and explosives. I was really good at building, operating and defusing bomb timers."

  "Wow, Allen, that's an awful story. Do you still stay in contact with your family?"

  "No! The day I left for boot camp was the last day I saw my family or communicated with them. They sent me letters, but I paid extra postage to have them returned unopened. My parents and sister died in a car accident about a week before I left the army. A highway patrol car was chasing a suspect in a car. That car slammed into my family's car killing them all."

  “I’m sorry. It's one more reason to hate this illegal state with its illegal cops that do nothing to protect the innocent, just another stupid example of our taxes going to waste. As sovereign citizens we shouldn't have to be bothered by cops from a state that is unconstitutional. Why can’t everyone see that this is wrong?” exclaimed Jerome.

  “Yes well, I doubt I would have stayed in touch since our ideologies were so far apart. Here's the irony of my life - my father was a politician in local then state government. From my observation, nearly all of the work he did was for his own reelection to a different office. I did not see any benefit to local or statewide citizens based upon his actions. Observing this in my teen years is what really drew me to the movement. I thought it was just a big waste of money and people created rules because it was work not because we needed it in a society. At the same time, I took a history class that studied the Constitution in depth. That was when I began to question whether California should be a territory or state. My understanding from that class and further study over the years confirmed that California should be a territory without state or local government."

  "Allen, that is so brilliant, I wish I had discovered the movement in my youth. I wouldn't have remained so unfocused and so confused by the actions of the state. Instead in my spare time I would surf the internet looking for ideas, looking to form my own thoughts about the world at large, looking to find a connection to people of like theology. I spent some time pursuing various Christian groups thinking that might be where I would find my kind of people, but it never really worked for me. Finally when I stumbled upon the movement four years ago, I finally felt like I belonged, that I was connected to my fellow man, and that I had a purpose in life."

  "We all arrive by different routes to the core of being a sovereign citizen," Allen summarized. "I'm glad I have you to partner with while we explore actions to take as sovereign citizens. I feel we will be friends for life after this experience."

  Thirty minutes later they arrived at the building that housed the Department of Revenue open-to-the-public quarterly meetings. Because they wanted the opportunity to scan the building several times to work through their plan, they had applied facial disguises including wigs, cheek enhancements, and glasses. They applied pieces of scotch tape to their fingertip pads so as to make sure they left no prints in the building, but would be invisible to any security that might be there. Hopefully, there wouldn't be any security.

  They located the building and it was very large with a parking lot that would rival any mall's lot. The structure was four stories tall with at least four interconnected buildings. They decided that Allen would enter the building and ask directions to the auditorium. He could say, if asked, that he was planning to attend the meeting next week of the Department of Revenue and possibly speak as a citizen but he was nervous and sometimes seeing a meeting room ahead of time eased his discomfort.

  With the script in mind that they had worked out, Allen entered the building and approached security. The guard, whom Allen could tell was rolling his eyes in his mind, maintained his professional demeanor and he simply provided directions to the auditorium after Allen went through security, advising that there was a different public meeting going on and it shouldn't be too disruptive for him to peek inside and get a sense of the auditorium.

  It was a good thing that Allen had gone on this first visit as he would have to give some thought about how to get explosives through the security scan. It shouldn't be too hard he thought. He entered the auditorium quietly as it was in use. Fortunately those inside ignored him and after he put his phone on silent, he was able to take several pictures to share with Jerome later.

  Ten minutes later, he was out in the car, sliding into the driver's seat. The men stayed quiet until they were on the freeway.

  "That was easy," Allen revealed. "I took pictures of both the security and the auditorium and I already have some ideas on what to do. After seeing another worthless taxpayer funded meeting in session while I sat in the room, I am so excited to implement your idea of killing everyone at this meeting next week. Even if we don't find our final two targets, I'll feel that our mission is complete if we kill this group next week."

  "The government can't keep the employees in Reno forever, so eventually they'll return home or perhaps the government will put them into witness protection. If they return home, we can kill them then," Jerome proposed. "I do agree with you that our best achievement would be to kill everyone at the meeting. We would be noted in the annals of the sovereign citizen movement as being on a level that the Oklahoma City bombers were to the militia movement."

  "Good point, Jerome. I'll have to read up on their approach. I just remember that their bombs leveled part of a government building and they killed a lot of kids in a pre-school. I want to avoid harming any child. There weren't any kids in the meeting today and there normally shouldn't be kids in one of these meetings unless it's with a member of the public attending the meeting."

  "Sounds like a plan. I wonder how the authorities figured out that our four kills were murders, and not just by natural causes. We've been watching the daily news the past month and we've not seen anything about the four deaths other than the obituaries in the paper. What changed that? Who and how did someone figure out that these were murders rather than normal deaths? We probably should spend some time looking at that question just to stay ten steps ahead of law enforcement."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jill and Marie planned to run each of the two killers' photographs through their facial recognition software. While they appeared to be the same photos taken from various cameras it never hurt to see if a different angle or a different resolution somehow gave the computer more information to do a match with. It was also approaching one in the afternoon and Jill was hungry. Doing a quick search on her iPhone, she located a Packer bar five miles away. There was a preseason football game scheduled to start in ten minutes featuring their favorite team, the Green Bay Packers. After a short drive, they soon walked into a dark bar called 'Strixe', attached to a bowling alley.

  Once their eyes adjusted to the dark, they noted that there were more decorations related to the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland Raiders than the Green Bay Packers, no surprise given the region of the country they were in. Walking up to the bar, the bartender wore a name tag that said 'Billy' and just below his name was the logo of the Packers. They instantly felt a sense of camaraderie with the stranger thanks to the logo on his apparel. Behind him on one of the bar’s many television sets was indeed the preseason game.

  With a pained smile, Billy rocked over to where the two women sat. Jill instantly noted that his gait was likely due to pain in his hips and probably pacing on his feet behind the bar was not helping the situation.

  "What would you like to drink?" Billy asked.

&nbs
p; Since they were in the middle of an investigation Jill settled for a Diet Coke while Marie threw caution to the winds and ordered a Bloody Mary. When he returned with their drinks, Jill couldn't resist asking, "How did you become a fan of the Packers?" She liked to ask that question when she came across a Packers fan in an unusual geographical location. The answer was always interesting.

  "I was born and raised in Wisconsin."

  Jill pointed at Marie and said, "She's here visiting from Green Bay; what city are you from?"

  "Eau Claire."

  Marie smiled and asked, "Northwest of Green Bay. What do you think of the Packers at the start of the season?"

  "I'm unhappy with the Defensive Coordinator, I always say I'm going to start a petition to have him removed," Billy provided with an unhappy look on his face.

  "At least the defense is improving," Marie replied. "You have to agree with that - we moved up in the rankings from the previous year to last year."

  "Did we win the Super Bowl?" Billy criticized.

  "No." Marie murmured.

  "Did we even play in the Super Bowl?" Billy further emphasized.

  "No."

  "Where did we end up in the offensive rankings?" Billy asked, going in for the kill on his conclusion.

  "I'm not sure but we were in the top five, maybe top three."

  "Exactly! We would've won the Super Bowl if we had had a better defense." Billy said as he walked away to serve another customer.

  Jill and Marie smiled at each other; this bar was going to be the perfect place to watch the first quarter of the game. They could see around them various plates of food that seemed to be delivered from a restaurant adjacent to the bar and bowling alley. Betsy's Restaurant menu featured delicious burgers, sandwiches, and appetizers giving the two women plenty of choices to mull over. It would be a fun place to watch a game during the regular season and the women were disappointed that they would have to leave such a fun atmosphere and return to work. As far as they could see, it was Billy and the two of them that were Packer fans, no one else in the bar cared about the team that was owned by the modest-sized city in one of the coldest regions of the continental United States. It was over a hundred degrees outside, but inside the bar were three people who had sat in an outdoor football stadium for three and a half hours, in temperatures that would freeze your beer before you could finish drinking it, as only true fans of the game could experience while cheering on the Green Bay Packers. Jill and Marie reveled in the kinship feeling common to Packer fans, before moving on to discuss the case.

  The bar had Wi-Fi in it and so they were using Henrik's software to again search for the images obtained from security and city-wide cameras of the two suspects. This time they had a bit more luck when they found a match for one of the suspects in an old military file from nearly two decades ago. They studied the two pictures for the similarities the software program saw. In the end, Jill just shook her head trusting that Henrik's software was infallible.

  "I'm going to step outside and make a call to my two contacts on this case. I don't think it should wait until the end of the first quarter," Jill said cheekily. Fortunately with preseason football you couldn't miss much as it was mostly about players fighting for a position on the squad. She dialed their numbers and again had both on a conference call.

  "Detective Chang and Lieutenant Moss, I'm going to forward you some new information on our suspects that I just gained from the facial recognition software," Jill said hitting the send button on her e-mail account. "We have a match from one of the photos from the storage facility. Apparently one of our suspects served our country in the Army and it looks like he enlisted right out of high school. His name in the newspaper article is Thomas Allen Hull. I am curious as to why this didn't show up in our earlier searches - both yours and mine."

  The picture was from a newspaper located in southern Oregon that announced engagements, anniversaries, graduations, and enlistments into the military.

  "Do either of you have a contact with the military?" questioned Jill. "I believe that Henrik's facial recognition software includes the military as I would think that your software program does. I'll be interested to hear what the military says."

  "As we have so many military bases in the state of California, the Highway Patrol has forged good relationships with all of them. The largest Army base in California is Fort Irwin in Southern California," noted Lieutenant Moss. "Let's see how quickly my counterpart in Southern California can find the information for us. At least we have the name. It may not be the name he goes by now, but perhaps we can track more information about him. We've speculated before at one of the suspects' abilities to hack into systems including many government systems apparently, but maybe he never knew that his hometown newspaper paid tribute to him when he left high school to join the military. It wouldn't have been on a computer rather he would've had to do a microfiche search which may or may not be indexed. Okay let me get to work on this gentleman. Still no identity for our second suspect, correct?"

  "Correct, we have no identity for the African-American suspect in our videos," Jill agreed. "We're going to do a full search now on Mr. Hull, but I think it would be helpful to have Army records. I'll feed both of you emails as we gain information about our suspect."

  In the noisy bar environment which quieted somewhat at the end of peak lunch traffic, Jill and Marie were keeping one eye and one ear on the preseason football game and the other eye and ear on their internet search of Thomas Allen Hull. Running into one dead end after another, whoever Mr. Hull was, he had done an excellent job of wiping his identity off of most major population databases. Social media was a bust as well; so they made the decision to move on to the family acknowledged by the newspaper article of his enlistment. The more she read about the family, the more she somewhat understood his connection to the sovereign citizen group. His father held many public offices and had a record of approving nearly any spending bill. Further research reviewed the family's tragic death within a week of Mr. Hull ending his enlistment with the military. It didn't take a psychologist to help Jill arrive at the conclusion that he likely never had closure with his family. They really needed his military records to understand his skill sets and any personnel reviews that he received. He was honorably discharged so it was not likely he had trouble with the military but simply he didn't want to be there. Focusing on his family, Jill and Marie developed a list of family friends from public pictures of the father of which there were many. Using tax records they formed a list of neighbors around the Hull house. The car accident that killed the Hull family had occurred eighteen years ago and it was likely that memories would be dim by now, but they had to try as he was one of two men suspected of killing four Department of Revenue employees.

  Jill and Marie received word that there would be a special meeting of the task force in another three hours and looking up at the game, the first quarter had come to an end. Unless you were a coach or coordinator the rest of the preseason game would be a bore. It was time to move to another location. With the inspiration of a good idea, she sent an email to Lieutenant Moss asking if there was an empty conference room or office they could use for the next several hours. At least then they would have high speed internet, privacy and quiet to do their research. He responded that there was a room available so they headed his way.

  Marie murmured, "I don't suppose we could nap along the way? The comfort food we had at the bar coupled with the Bloody Mary has me dying for an afternoon nap. Perhaps you can find a coffee house and I'll get a large coffee, probably iced, given this heat."

  Jill smiled and nodded, "You could still get a hot coffee as the building is likely over air-conditioned."

  Marie agreed, "Hot coffee it is then!"

  A short time later, they were ensconced in an empty office, provided water, guest access to the building's Wi-Fi, directions to restrooms and vending machines, and then they were left alone to work in silence. An aide in the Highway Patrol office had shown them to
the room so as yet they had no new information from the Army on Hull. They spent an hour putting together a profile of who might be able to provide them with more information about the Hull family. Then they began the telephone calls.

  "Hello, this is Dr. Jill Quint, is this Mrs. Austin?" Jill asked when a female voice answered the phone.

  "Yes it is. Do I know you?"

  "I'm calling on behalf of the California Highway Patrol where I'm working as a consultant in a criminal case. Approximately eighteen years ago you were a neighbor of the Hull family. Is that correct?"

  "Yes Nancy Hull and I were good friends. It was such a tragic loss when the whole family died in that automobile accident. It was a horrific accident in that the vehicle caught on fire and cremated everyone inside since the fire was so intense. Their remains were contained in a family urn as they couldn't separate the fragments and ashes. I lost my best friend that day. How could you possibly have a criminal case that involves a family that's been dead for that length of time?"

  Jill suddenly realized she was in dangerous territory. She did not want to publicly accuse Thomas Allen Hull to a complete stranger. Thinking quickly she asked, "Actually while investigating our current case we had a question arise about Thomas Hall, their son who was not in the vehicle at the time of the accident. We have been unable to reach him to ask him any questions. So we are looking at friends and family of the Hull family to see if they might fill in some of the blanks for us or help us locate him. What do you remember about Thomas?"

  "Wow you're really dipping back into my memory with that question. Thomas was enlisted in the Army at the time of the accident and I'm sure it was a great loss for him at the time."

  "Did you speak with him at the family's funeral?"

  "No, he didn't attend. Nancy's family handled the funeral and services and said they had received a phone call from Thomas that he would be unable to attend services. We all thought that was strange as no one had ever heard of the military not granting emergency leave for a situation like this. Furthermore Nancy had mentioned within the month before her death that Thomas was leaving the military within the next few weeks as his enlistment was up. He had not communicated with them since his enlistment so I would've said they had a strained relationship."