Misdemeanor Trials

by Milton Schacter

  “Mr. Welby, this is Mike O'Reilly at City Homicide. Are you the Parole Agent for Carlos Zelaya?”

  “Yes, I am,” replied Welby.

  “I am working on a possible homicide by Zelaya, but I don't have a body and I don't have a weapon and I need a search,” said O'Reilly.

  “That makes your homicide case kind of difficult to charge when you don't have a dead body, not to mention a weapon,” said Welby. O'Reilly didn't need Welby's gratuitous comments on the state of the case, but he responded politely.

  “We do have a body, only it is in liquid form, blood, with an identified victim. We just don't have the rest of the body. And we have a reliable witness,” said O'Reilly.

  “What can I do for you?” asked Welby.

  “I need a Parole search on his body and his home,” said O'Reilly.

  “That could be a problem.”

  “How's that?” asked O'Reilly.

  “Zelaya's parole is ending in a week and he has been banked,” said Welby.

  “What do you mean banked?”

  “He's been conforming to Parole without a hitch. Never missed an appointment. Never tested dirty. We did several home visits and there were no problems. So after two years, he was banked. He doesn't have to report, no drug tests, no home visits. I don't have time to get his case out of the bank before his Parole is up. Anyway, he could easily accuse me of an arbitrary home visit and search, and you would end up with an unreasonable search, and any evidence would be tossed. And I am certain his attorney would be in court making a motion to dismiss. You probably should get a search warrant,” said Welby.

  “I guess that is what I'll have to do. I just didn't want my confidential informant to be exposed to Zelaya,” said O'Reilly.

  “Good Luck,” said Welby.

  O'Reilly hesitated. He needed more evidence to put Zelaya out of business. Over the last several years Zelaya beat up his girlfriend to the point she was hospitalized. But when she improved, she recanted and is still with him. He was a suspect in another homicide, but Zelaya had lawyered up, and the investigation went nowhere when a witness recanted, and another witness disappeared. Only after Zelaya assaulted a police officer several years earlier was he sent to prison. O'Reilly wanted Zelaya badly. Zelaya was a cancer on the breast of humanity. O'Reilly had to be very careful or Zelaya would catch wind that he was the focus of a homicide. Marty would be at risk. He decided to ask around, find out about Chavez, and try to find out the other gang banger who was on the dock. Zelaya knew that once he had another investigation focusing on him, he would have to lawyer up and take care of business, and O'Reilly also knew what that meant. He had to have a strong case before he let Zelaya know the investigation was ongoing. O'Reilly felt he had to protect Marty as long as he could, but he knew there were leaks on the police force, and in the DA's office. Marty may have spoken to others, or the Parole agent might mention something to Zelaya or tell him he was under suspicion, and that there was a witness, or any of the other persons O’Reilly had spoken to while trying to find the Parole Agent for Zelaya. There were too many ways for the information to leak out. He would have to act quickly.

  “When I get more, I'll get the search warrant, next week or the week after. Right now, I work on the case, like a good cop. In the meantime don't let Zelaya know we are looking at him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  THE MORGUE

  John picked up the ringing phone. “John Trader.”

  “Mr. Trader, this is Dr. Mandel in the Medical Examiners officer. I have an unidentified overdose DB here who had a District Attorney business card with your name and number on it. If you could come down as soon as possible it would make identification go a lot more quickly.”

  “Okay,” said John. “I’ll be down in fifteen minutes.” John grabbed his overcoat to protect against the cold wind he would face in the ten minute walk to the morgue. Spring was about to break through, but the last few days of winter had been chilling. John was looking forward to Spring and the global warming that happens every year at the same time. This would be his second trip to the morgue. The first had been a tour for new District Attorneys. He knew to expect that his senses would be assaulted by the smell of cleaning agents, preservatives, the chill of the refrigeration that was constantly on, and the sight of motionless, naked bodies lying on their backs with large ugly stitches on their torso. He was familiar with dying, but he knew he would never become accustomed to the dead, even though Trader had seen many of the dead in his life. He remembered his first exposure to violent death was when he was twelve. A small tornado had come through is father’s farm and killed several of his father’s cows. He went to see them lying dead and bloated. And then he saw the woman. She was broken and covered with debris, and lay motionless among the dead animals and tree limbs and remnants of buildings, her clothes ripped from her by the violent wind. He recalled a year after the tornado when his dog Dynamite, a Labrador, was sick from old age. His dad took him to the vet where John held his best friend and stayed with his friend while the vet gave Dynamite a shot of something that would end Dynamite’s pain. He felt the rigid expression of life in Dynamite’s body suddenly leave, and Dynamite went limp in his arms. John knew his friend’s fragile spirit had left his body and gone somewhere else.

  John’s thoughts were abruptly interrupted when he reached the door of the morgue. He walked into the building and followed the signs pointing to the departments at the Morgue. There was administration, receiving, initial holding, photography, dental identification, DNA and logistics. He walked down the hallway to administration. There was no security here at the morgue. There were no metal detectors or deputies, apparently because none of the occupants were at risk of injury. When he entered the door marked administration there was a carpeted hallway with a sign. He saw Dr. Mandel’s name and turned left towards his office. Dr. Mandel’s office was empty and he asked the person in the office right next to Dr. Mandel’s where the doctor might be. “He’s in the refrigeration unit. It’s down the hall to the right. Just follow the signs.” Trader walked down the hall to the double doors. He removed his jacket so that it would not absorb the smell of death. He put on a full length lab coat that was there for visitors and entered the room. The room was filled with bodies on gurneys, some still clothed, some draped with white sheets, some naked and stitched. He saw Mandel on the other side of the room and walked directly toward him without looking at the naked and the dead. His senses were assaulted as he felt his stomach turn. He asked himself why he had not told Dr. Mandel to fax him a photo.

  “Mr. Trader, I assume. The young lady is over there.” He pointed to his right and said, “Follow me.” The body was covered with a white sheet. “She came in this morning, found on the street. She has been dead about twelve hours. She had no I.D. on her, and it would take hours, and maybe days to get her fingerprints through AFIS. And even then, we might not get a hit. I appreciate you coming down. You can see we are jammed here. But that is the case most of the time. It is obvious by looking at her she was an OD. She has all the visible signs. When she came in one of the Medical Examiner Inspectors found your card in her pocket.” Mandel picked up a plastic baggie off the gurney with a single business card and gave it to Trader. It was his D.A. business card. On the back of it he saw in pencil written “Carlos” followed by a phone number. He put it in his pocket. Mandel then reached over and pulled back the white sheet over her face. Trader looked at her and knew it was the girl he saw when the courtroom had been evacuated on a bomb scare months earlier, Susan Owens. Her face looked more marked up with sores than he recalled when he had seen her last. She was thin and her skin was a pallid yellow. She had relapsed. She could not shake her methamphetamine addiction. Carlos was her source.

  Trader looked at her for a moment. He was hit by the sadness he knew whenever he saw anyone dead, friend or foe. He wondered if he could have helped or protected her somehow on the bright morning outside of the courthouse, or when he had spoken to her with Prob
ation Officer Mosby. He would never know, but at least he felt he had tried. Without moving he said, “Yes, I recognize her. But I didn’t have her case. Her name is Susan Owens. She was on probation. Mosby in presentencing can give you her identifiers. I’m sorry I can’t help you.” Trader lingered a moment over the gurney and looked at the lifeless girl from Iowa, who had a short time ago been full of life, wanted adventure, independence and fun. Only after the perversion of those youthful motivations, did she want what was in the final analysis the things of most importance, her home, Iowa, and her parents. There would soon be anguish, sadness and tragedy in Fort Madison, Iowa.

  “Thanks for coming down,” said Mandel. Mandel turned and walked to an autopsy table with the body of a Mexican male with several clean, round red marks on his chest that John knew were bullet holes. Mandel lowered his plastic protective mask, reached for a scalpel, and began speaking into a microphone over the table. John turned to leave. John glanced to his right, and left, as he walked towards the door. There was a hint of recognition on one of the gurneys. He stopped and looked at the man whose head was exposed and his body was covered with a white sheet. Trader walked over, grabbed the side of the gurney. He recognized Marty. Trader saw what he knew so well was a bullet hole in the right eye of Marty’s head. John lowered his head, pushed his body back and forth on the gurney rails and anguished as he involuntarily said, “No. No. No. No.” A feeling of anger he had been able to muzzle for years now rose to the surface. He turned and walked out of the morgue. He tried to control the rage he felt for the hour it took him to walk back to his office. The one word that kept pounding in his brain was retribution.

  When he got back to the office he dialed is phone. “Detective Murphy, this is John Trader. I just returned from the Morgue. Susan Owens was there. Do you know what happened?” asked John.

  “I sat with her for several hours,” said Murphy. “She was a great informant. After she left I lost track of her. Her information was confirmed after a visit to a few of the addresses she gave us. We set up a task force with the Feds based on the addresses she told us. It only took a few days of surveillance of each of the properties to establish probable cause for a search warrant. Fourteen Federal search warrants were executed at the same time in six states. We found meth labs in every location, arrested over fifty people and confiscated something close to five hundred thousand dollars. Locally, we hit their meth lab. We have dried up the supply of meth in this town. The local distributor, a crook named Zelaya, is crying for product. His supplier was big in this area, but we could not tie Zelaya directly to the lab. I’m sorry to hear about Owens. She looked like she was making a run at leading a normal life. That’s tough to do when you are a meth addict. Very rarely do people escape. The only sure way is death.”

  “It was clear she was back on it. The Medical Examiner said she overdosed,” said John.

  “She helped us out. She tried to make things right,” said Murphy.

  “Yeah, she did.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  INTERVENTION

  “What you are in the dark is what you are.”

  --Fred Altomare

  After work John took the commuter train home. When he arrived at his station, he walked the short distance towards his home, stopping in the small village drug store. John bought a disposable cell phone. He still felt the anger that clouded his mind, and forced him, by instinct, back into the survival mode. When he got home, Trader threw his coat onto the couch and went into the back bedroom. He opened the closet and reached in. On the floor he stored a rifle wrapped in felt.

  He took the wrapped rifle into his living room and removed the felt cover. Shiny, well oiled, and fully assembled he looked at his fully suppressed CheyTac Intervention M-200, a trophy from Afghanistan. It was a rifle with the longest range of any rifle, and could hit a target from one and half miles with lethal accuracy when used with a .408 CheyTac bullet. The rifle was bolt action and bullets are fed into the weapon from a single stack magazine that held seven rounds. He looked at the weapon, never thinking he would fire it again. It had saved his life many times, saved his buddies lives, and killed a lot of the enemy. It was the big fist.

  John changed his clothes into jeans and a dark sweatshirt, got into his fifteen year old dark blue Ford Explore and drove several miles to the abandoned housing development on the east side of the waterway. He had seen the derelict dwellings from the Ferry when the Ferry crossed under the railroad Bridge. The sun was setting and the streets where he was driving began to darken in the shade of the beginning night. The street where he was headed was abandoned, and weeds sprouted from cracks in the pavement. No one had driven on this street for a long time. He parked his car near the derelict building. He got out of his car and walked towards the building. The doors and windows were ineffectively boarded over. He pushed a door open into what he recognized as an old warehouse. He carefully climbed stairs that led to a second level. There he could see the water from any of several broken windows as the boats passed under the Bridge. He estimated that the water was about half a mile away.

  He picked up the burner phone, reached for his business card with the telephone number on the back, and dialed. A gruff voice answered. John said, “Carlos, say nothing. I have five Kilos. Tomorrow take the 11:30 Ferry out of Winton Pier. Be on the top deck of the ferry in the stern platform of the Ferry. Wait there. If you show up, a mule will approach you with a sample, a taste, and the mule will leave. I will call tomorrow and if you want a deal we can talk about price.” He closed the phone.

  John knew the Ferry well. He had taken it five days a week for three years as he traveled from his home to law school. Each morning he would wake at five A.M., go to the public outdoor pool and swim laps for forty minutes. In the warm weather, in the cold weather, and in the freezing weather he would repeat the same routine. After the workout he would dress, grab his backpack full of books, and head to the Ferry. The routine each day, and the dependability of the Ferry gave him a sense of stability, and security, that in the prior few years had abandoned him. He would spend the thirty minute Ferry ride with a cup of black coffee and review his notes from the night before. He would arrive at Oars Pier for the short walk to school, prepared for his classes, something he had never done in High School or College, but it was something he had to do now. He had to focus now, and he had to succeed, because he had nowhere else to go, and he had no one to depend on, and nothing else to do.

  He did not know if Carlos would appear on the Ferry. John did not know how the murderous criminal mind worked, but he did understand that Carlos shared the risky life that was motivated by greed and nurtured by a lawless history.

  When John returned to his home, he rolled his rifle into a small rug from his floor. He wrapped it once with duct tape and carried it to his garage, and put it into the trunk of his car. He returned to his kitchen, grabbed a cold Corona from the fridge and restlessly thought about the unintended consequences of the actions he planned for the next day.

  Saturday morning was clear and brisk with a slow chilling wind from the North. He packed his computer and his range finder, and drove towards the edge of the water near the Bridge, away from the warehouse he had visited the day before. He parked his car and got a small briefcase that held his computer from the trunk. It was getting cold. He powered up his computer, and grabbed the meteorological and environmental information from the nearest NOAA weather recording site. He downloaded information from the sensors that measures the wind speed, air temperature, air pressure, relative humidity, wind chill, and dew point. He let it sit for a few minutes while he retrieved his rangefinder. He drove to the abandoned warehouse, parked and peered through his rangefinder for a distance to the target. He downloaded the environmental information into the small chip in his rangefinder. John would find his mark.

  With the carpet covered rifle and the rangefinder, John approached the building where he had opened the door a few days before. He walked up the stairs to the perch. This
would be his forward firing position, his FFP. He placed several wood boxes at the bottom of the window as a rest for his rifle and one to sit on. He attached the pre-programmed rangefinder to the rifle, pointed it out the window, and waited in the cold, dark, abandoned building. He watched through his rangefinder as the 8:30 Ferry pass under the bridge. He ran through his head the speed of the Ferry, relying on his computer to adjust to the ambient conditions. He waited and focused again as the 9:30 Ferry passed under the bridge. The sun, low in the sky, was bright but added no warmth to the air. John sat patiently in the shadows. The cold began to seep through his down jacket. As the 10:30 Ferry passed under the bridge, John made his final rehearsal. He began to feel that fear he knew so well as the moments ticked by before the 11:30 Ferry traveled by. He did not want to be here. He did not want to kill again. He thought he was finished with that.