Where's Ellen? (Mystery) (MPP A JOE MCFARLAND / GINNY HARRIS MYSTERY Book 1)

by Stuart Safft

  The two agents spent the next few hours doing paperwork on this and other cases.

  Then Florio stated, “OK, let’s get back to our Ellen Sanders case. Info is flowing in pretty quickly from all the inquiries and assignments you initiated earlier. This is our lucky day.”

  “It must be our clean living,” jested Martin. Picking up several messages on his desk, he continued, “She had no classified files in her briefcase, but there were plenty of classified files and e-mails on her laptop. They’re heavily encrypted, but they were no match for the military geeks who sorted through it all.”

  “That’s good. Do we have the details of the e-mails?”

  “Sort of,” replied Martin. “The military tech put together a summary of all her e-mails by date, showing who she wrote to and who wrote to her. We’ll have to check out each name to see if any red flags pop up. The e-mail summaries are very general, not helpful. Same with the description of the classified files she worked with. We’re not cleared for the details.”

  “What do you mean ‘very general’?” Give me an example,” said Florio.

  “The most common description in this whole summary is ‘Details about certain components for building a classified device.’ That doesn’t tell us shit.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean. By the way, I got this note with a message from her boss that a review of the Tycon fax machines’ memories turned up nothing suspicious.”

  “Anything else?” asked Martin.

  “Hold on. I’m getting to that, Dan. Over the past three months, there were numerous e-mails on her cell phone to and from a number of individuals in China and in Pakistan, as well as in several other foreign countries. The contents of these e-mails seem to be innocuous, dealing with commercial orders and contracts, scheduling of telephone and in-person meetings, and so on. They’re either totally innocent and ordinary or are cleverly coded messages passing well-disguised information.”

  “We’ll never be able to figure that out. Let’s forward those e-mails to NSA and ask the geeks to analyze them to see whether they are, in fact, coded messages. But with the huge backlog at NSA, we’ll be lucky to get an answer sometime within our lifetimes. The only real hope we have is that if we uncover more suspicious evidence, we can jump to the head of the National Security Agency’s queue.”

  Florio added, “And while we’re at it, let’s also get a request into the State Department’s Defense Controls Group to be sure that none of her businesses have been improperly shipping any military items to prohibited countries.”

  “Good idea.”

  A review of the phone calls Ellen made and received on her office, cell and home phones similarly indicated several calls with Chinese- and Pakistani-based phones. Martin asked one of his colleagues to start the tedious task of determining who was on the other end of each of these calls. Martin and Florio had the date of each call, the length of the call and the number called or called from, but they did not have access to any of the actual conversations.

  “And, by the way, she wasn’t talking on her cell phone with anyone when her husband got back from jogging. She was either listening to her voice mails or making believe she was talking with someone.”

  “That’s an interesting little tidbit,” said Florio.

  Martin picked up and scanned two other messages on his desk. “Forensic Accounting confirms that there were no suspicious money movements into or out of any of the Sanders’ bank and investment accounts, unless, of course, there are other secret, unidentified accounts we don’t know about. Also, no useful information from the canvassing of neighbors and checking with taxi and limo companies.”

  Martin and Florio were, however, surprised by a few pieces of information.

  “Dan, look how often she traveled to China and Pakistan. And, based on the agenda on her laptop, also look at the frequent number of visitors she had from these two countries. Either she was very busy conducting international business as part of her job, or her job offered super cover for these frequent communications and visits for more sinister purposes. Nothing definitively illegal, but surely ample opportunity for such activities.”

  “I agree. And check this out. Take a look at the application and investigation for her security clearance. It looks like Tycon first applied on her behalf in 2007, but she wasn’t a U.S. citizen at that point and the application was quickly rejected. Apparently, making exceptions for non-citizens is a pretty rare event. Then last year, Tycon reapplied after she became a U.S. citizen. It seems that it’s only been since 2007 that Belgium has allowed its citizens to also hold citizenship in another country. But I wonder how in the world the DOD approved her clearance after getting this investigation report from the Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Investigative Services.”

  “Why? What’s in there that’s so terrible?” asked Florio.

  “She was born and raised in Brussels, Belgium. And she graduated first in her engineering class from one of the top Belgian universities.”

  “What’s wrong with that? You jealous of her education?”

  “Hold on. Here comes the juicy part. Following her graduation from Katholic Universiteit, or however you pronounce it, she spent a year with her then-boyfriend living off the grid in St. Petersburg, Russia. There’s no record of where they lived, what they did or how they earned money. It was widely assumed by their university friends that partying, alcohol and drugs were the mainstays of that year.”

  “Yeah. Sounds like what I’d love to do for a year. But that also gave her plenty of opportunity to get chummy with a couple of commies.”

  “My thought exactly,” agreed Martin. “So to summarize what we’ve learned about the possible espionage angle so far, she sure could have, and she sure might have, but we sure have no evidence that she did.”

  “Yup, as usual, Dan, you summarized things superbly.”

  “We need to get a better handle on the details of all her overseas trips. This seems like a great task for those two new agents who just joined us straight out of the academy.”

  “Good idea, Dan. I’ll get the probies here now.”

  The two new agents were there in less than five minutes. Martin stood up and greeted them. “Hi. I’m ASAC Martin and this is SA Florio.”

  “Yes, we know who you both are, sir. I’m Elliott Atkins.”

  “And I’m Lou Jensen. What can we do for you?”

  Martin briefly described Ellen Sanders’ disappearance and the possibility of her having divulged protected military information. “We need you two to thoroughly identify and examine all, and I mean all, of her international travel over the past two years. You guys have to be extremely thorough. And we need your report within the next two or three days.”

  “OK. We’re on it,” said Lou Jensen.

  “Hang on a sec,” said Florio. “This will be your first real assignment outside of the make-believe training stuff you did at Quantico. Let me give you a couple of hints. You two should work with and tie together all the info you can get from the corporate travel agency that her employer uses, the details on the expense reports she submitted for reimbursement, her agenda on her laptop, charges she made on her credit cards and calls she made on her cell phone or on hotel phones from overseas locations.”

  “Thanks for the tips, sir. We’ll take care of this and get back to both of you as quickly as we can,” said Elliott Atkins.

  “Good. Get going,” concluded Martin. And with that, the two new agents were gone.

  Next, using the speaker phone, Martin placed a call to Gladys Harding, the Tycon vice president. The FBI agents were quickly brought up to speed and learned the same information that Joe and Ginny had obtained earlier: $3 million of life insurance plus $4 million of stock grants and options, for all of which Steve Sanders was the beneficiary if Ellen died.

  “Not an inconsequential motive,
” whispered Florio to Martin.

  “What about kidnap insurance?” Florio asked Harding, leading them to get a short summary of the kidnap insurance in place for Tycon’s senior executives.

  “That’s a lot more than pocket change! Imagine if a kidnapper knew that,” again whispered Florio to Martin.

  After thanking Harding and hanging up, Martin summarized the obvious: “In addition to the espionage possibility, neither murder, presumably done or arranged by her husband for the life insurance, nor kidnapping, presumably done by anyone, can be ruled out.”

  “With brilliant deductions like that, Dan, it’s clear why you’re the assistant special agent in charge and I’m only a lowly special agent.”

  “Gimme a break,” replied Martin.

  CHAPTER 12

  While the FBI agents were busy gathering information about Ellen Sanders, Joe and Ginny were back at Jasper Creek PD working on other cases.

  Joe was slowly and painfully typing with two fingers the report of a coin laundry robbery that they had been assigned a week ago. “Damn, we have no leads at all. Why the hell do I have to spend time writing this useless report?”

  “Yeah, a pain, isn’t it?”

  “I’d rather try to figure out what got our FBI friends so interested in Ellen Sanders. Or, as they so elegantly put it, in ‘the woman we know as Ellen Sanders.’ What the hell did they mean by that? ”

  “Good question. But we really should focus on this pile of paperwork or we’ll never get out from behind these desks. Although I do have to admit that I’m also intrigued by the FBI’s interest, especially if it really came down from D.C.”

  “Yeah. But I wouldn’t put much trust in their BS about this coming from FBI headquarters. They use that line whenever they think it will help them bully others to do or not do what the FBI wants. But still, either the FBI is very overstaffed with nothing to keep its agents busy, or there’s more here than we little hick town cops have recognized.”

  “Don’t sell yourself, or me, short, Joe. We’ll figure it out. But for now, let’s get our heads buried back in this paperwork we have to finish.”

  “OK, I’ll try. But I’m sure my head will keep jumping out of the pile and back onto the Sanders case.”

  “I know. Mine, too. But let’s do the best we can.”

  Five minutes later, “Ginny, I think we should go back and re-interview Mr. Sanders,” suggested Joe. “Now that we’ve learned he stands to gain a whole pot full of money from his wife’s life insurance and all those stocks, he merits another set of questions, a bit more hard-nosed this time.”

  “But what about the chief clearly warning us to butt out of this case?” asked Ginny.

  “He’ll only be mad if we don’t come up with anything.”

  It wasn’t very hard at all for Joe to convince Ginny. And so, they neatly re-piled the stacks of paper on their desks and back they went to the Sanders’ house. Once again, Steve opened the door, greeted them and led them to their seemingly assigned seats in the family room.

  “Any news?” Steve anxiously asked.

  “No, not yet,” replied Joe. “But we hope to have some shortly. Please walk us through again everything that happened yesterday.”

  “Uh, um, I don’t know if I’m supposed to.”

  “Why? What do you mean?” asked Ginny.

  “Two FBI agents were here yesterday, following the fire department search. They told me that I should only deal with them, not with you.”

  “Oh, really?” said Joe, with a side glance to Ginny, who, in turn, rolled her eyes and looked up at the ceiling.

  “Yes, they said that the FBI is best equipped to deal with situations like this, and they wanted to avoid any communications or coordination problems. They said they’re keeping you two informed and involved as appropriate.”

  “Well, we’re not surprised,” responded Ginny. “This is typical inter-agency rivalry. It’s important that you not get dragged into the middle of this. The FBI clearly are the experts when it comes to kidnapping, but no one is yet at all sure that your wife has been kidnapped.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?” asked Steve.

  “You can talk to whomever you wish, Steve. The FBI, or we, can’t tell you who you can and cannot speak to. This is still America and the Bill of Rights is still in effect,” Ginny continued. “It’s your decision, but we’d suggest you talk with both us and the FBI to be sure that all possible resources are being used to locate your wife. If you just stay open and forthright with all of us, you’ll be fine.”

  “Oh, OK. I guess you’re right.”

  Ginny repeated, “So, please walk us through again everything that happened yesterday.”

  “But I already told you everything yesterday,” protested Steve.

  “Please humor us and do it again,” said Ginny. “Often, after a period of time, a witness remembers little details that he or she initially forgot or didn’t think to mention.”

  “OK,” and he went through the same story as yesterday. As he repeated everything that had happened, Steve became increasing upset, visibly shaking and even stuttering a bit. Ginny found herself empathizing with Steve, becoming increasingly convinced of how distraught he was. Joe, on the other hand, reached a more balanced conclusion, unable to decide whether Steve was really upset about his wife’s disappearance or whether he deserved an Oscar nomination for his performance.

  “Any other little details to add?” asked Joe when Steve finished.

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Funny, since I can think of seven million little details.”

  “Huh?” stumbled Steve with a bewildered look on his face. “What are you talking about?”

  “Let’s cut the BS. We know that you’ll gain $7 million in life insurance and Tycon stock if your wife turns up dead. This strikes us as more than a little, minor detail which you forgot to mention to us.”

  “I wasn’t keeping it secret. I just didn’t think that it matt… Hey, wait a minute! You don’t think that I had anything to do with Ellen’s disappearance, do you? Do you really think I’d kill my wife for money? In case you haven’t noticed, we already live quite well on what we both earn.”

  “Yes, you do. But not as well as if you had an additional $7 million. Any other ‘little details’ you forgot to tell us about?” asked Joe.

  “No. And given your line of thinking and questions, you can contact my attorney when you want to talk to me again. I’ll get his card for you.” Steve briskly walked out of the room to the office, returned and handed Joe a business card of one of the criminal defense attorney partners in his firm. “Here’s his card,” barked Steve. “I sure wish you were doing something useful to find my wife instead of wasting time treating me as a suspect!”

  “That’s fine. We are focused on finding your wife. And that means pursuing all possibilities, not just the ones that you’re comfortable with. Just don’t leave the area without talking to us first,” instructed Joe as he and Ginny guided themselves back to the front door, exited the house and climbed into their car.

  “Well, that went pretty much as expected,” said Ginny. “He’s pissed and turning to an attorney. And we’re still not even supposed to be involved in this case.”

  “Yeah. It must be my sterling personality,” said Joe as he shrugged his shoulders and then put the car into gear and headed back downtown. “The good news is that Sanders seems to mostly see me as the one who pissed him off. Sure, you were there with me so you share some guilt by association, but I think he sees you as more understanding and more on his side than me.”

  “Another example of our good cop/bad cop routine, where I’m always the good cop without us even having to plan it out first.”

  “Bad cop just seems to come s
o naturally to me,” concluded Joe.

  As soon as they got back to their desks, Ginny started the paperwork and phone calls to get the necessary approvals to place wiretaps on all of Steve Sanders’ phones — home, cell and office. Thanks to her many years with the department, she knew how to do this with minimal risk of the chief finding out about it, at least for a couple of days. It must have been her lucky day, because she got the approved interception warrant within two hours and had the taps in place an hour after that. But things did get a bit crowded, thanks to the nonexistent cooperation between the local police and the FBI.

  At almost the same instant, after obtaining a federal wiretap warrant, Florio had taps placed on Ellen’s cell and office phones, as he had done earlier for those of Steve. Although there were multiple wiretaps, it was relatively straightforward: Some taps were allowed because of Steve’s consent, others were federal taps related to the possibility of espionage, and the remainder were allowed by a state warrant based on possible murder or kidnapping.

  As Joe and Ginny turned their attention back to the paperwork for some of their other cases, the chief walked over to their desks.

  “My office! Both of you! Now!”

  The chief turned around and stomped back toward his office. Ginny and Joe exchanged worried glances, stood up and trailed after the chief.

  When they entered the chief’s office, the chief sat down behind his desk and Joe and Ginny stood in front of it.

  “Shut the damn door,” bellowed the chief.

  While Joe was closing the door, Ginny sweetly asked, “Chief, what’s this about? You seem upset.”

  “Very perceptive, Ginny. You must be a detective. What this is about is a phone call that I got from the FBI duo.”

  “And?” asked Joe.

  “Don’t ‘and’ me. You know exactly what. They called all pissed that you two had gone to interview people at Tycon. And they even thought I had told you to do that.”

  “But Chief…,” started Joe before the chief cut him off.

  “Don’t ‘but Chief’ me! It’s you two’s job to protect me from this crap. And if you don’t, you’ll each get a kick in your butts so hard that you won’t be able to sit down for a week.”