by Alec Peche
After a huge sigh, she put her hand out to Agent Ortiz.
"I am Dr. Jill Quint, and someone has been trying to kill me during the last week. This is my boyfriend Nathan and my dog Trixie. We would very much like to stay alive."
Agent Ortiz replied in kind, “Nice to meet you, Dr. Quint. I am Agent Ortiz. Let me introduce you to the other agents. This is Agent Ben Brown and Agent Kelly O'Sullivan. We are all based in the San Francisco field office"
The crisis past, they regrouped to discuss theories about the death of Graeme St. Louis. Jill spoke at length regarding the science background necessary in the killer.
"To use bacteria as a weapon means that you have to have knowledge of certain things.” Jill ticked them off on her fingers.
“Which bacteria to buy, how to incubate and keep it alive from a food and temperature perspective, how much bacteria it would take to harm someone, where to buy the supplies like the agars, the temperature-controlled environment, and the bacteria itself. One would have to know how to mix it in a vial and what amount to inject into Graeme. On a less technical side, he needed to know Graeme’s location in the hospital, how to quietly enter his room, and where to inject the substance.
"My microbiology expert on this case, Dr. Johnson, took 3 days of experimenting to come up with a scenario of how it could be done. The killer had to experiment several times to make the weapon effective. He would have needed to try the substance on animals or humans to verify potency. As the plan to murder Graeme while he was scuba diving could not have been hatched more than 3 weeks in advance, because that was when Graeme planned the trip, this also points to someone needing scientific knowledge and ready access to the bacteria, as a patient and organized murderer. Once the murder location was chosen, the bacterial weapon could have been prepared in under a week."
The officers and agents from both the SFPD and the FBI had rapidly taken notes on Jill's comments. They had legal power behind them that Jill lacked. They could request records of sales by legitimate microbiology supply companies worldwide. No legitimate supplier ever would want to see its shipment turned into a weapon. Garden variety bacteria was not viewed as a weapon. Rather when people thought of bio-terrorism, Ebola virus or anthrax is what came to mind. In this case, the bio-terrorism source was actually the number one cause of sinus infections in the adult population.
Agent O'Sullivan called the home office, requesting information about the shipments of bacteria cultures.
Agent Ortiz turned to Detective Carlson and asked, "Did you contact the hospital to see if it had a camera turned on the hallway outside of Graeme's room? Was the killer caught on tape entering Graeme's room?"
"Yes, I contacted the hospital. While it has many cameras on many hallways inside University Hospital, the corridor outside of Graeme's room was not a taped location. We have a 6 to 8 hour window of time when the injection could have occurred. We have a detective working with the hospital to see if there is anything unusual in any of the hallways or stairwells on the path to Graeme's room. As you know, it was a long period of time, and there was a lot of activity there. We are using facial recognition software to eliminate employees recorded on any of the cameras. There are more than 50 faces of non-employees. These faces could be visitors to other patients, contractors, or the killer."
"Adding to this complexity, some of the people on camera wore surgical masks. And, of course, the killer could have wearing a disguise. It’s too early to determine if we'll be able to identify a suspect recorded on one of the cameras.
"We've also surveyed the street where someone was alleged to have pulled a knife on Graeme. Sometimes we have traffic cameras on streets. Unfortunately, in this case there was no camera trained on the street. It is the same situation with the building where the law office is. There is a camera on all entry or exit doors but not in any interior stairwells."
Jill had a thought about her own security system. She excused herself for a moment and left the room to call her security company. Bill Johnson, her security company employee, came on the line, and she identified herself, her location, and gave him her personal identification number. Her identity was verified.
"Regarding the system you installed on my property, are any of the cameras trained on the southwest hill?"
"Just a minute, ma'am, while I review your camera locations. I am going to place you on hold for 2 to 3 minutes while I check."
Jill heard the usual telephone hold music. He returned in less than 60 seconds.
"Dr. Quint, you do have a camera pointed at the southwest hill. In fact you have 360-degree camera coverage."
"I'm just beginning to understand the features of my new security system. Were you notified that I had a security breach today?"
"Yes, ma'am, we received that notification about half an hour ago of the breach. We are reviewing the specifics of your system to understand why no alarms triggered. A technician should be arriving at your house within the next 10 minutes to check the system."
"You may have some very valuable information at your disposal. I presently have agents from the FBI in my house, and I would like to include them in our conversation. Please hold on."
Jill returned to the other room. She explained to the group the features of her security system and the fact that the sniper should have been caught on camera. She asked the FBI agents to join her on the phone conversation with the security company. She returned to the room containing the landline phone with Agent Ortiz in tow.
"Bill, I have you on speakerphone. With me is Agent Ortiz of the San Francisco FBI office. You indicated that I have cameras trained upon the land surrounding my house. Can you recover images from 2 to 3 hours ago? Can you save those tapes, and can you send me a copy immediately so I can get a look at the shooter?"
"Bill, this is Agent Ortiz. I actually would like you to save whatever recordings you have for the past 3 days. Jill, you returned from Puerto Rico 3 days ago, right? We should look at all the recordings since you returned from San Juan."
"Bill, this is Jill again. Can you give me a call when you have all those recordings available for us to view?"
He agreed and they ended the call. Jill heard someone from the security company pull up in her driveway. It would be interesting to know why her alarm system had failed to sound when the shooter crossed on to her property. No security system was completely foolproof. As she had a mad scientist on her hands, perhaps he had created some kind of jammer that confused her new system.
Law enforcement personnel had completed their questioning of Nathan. This latest case of Jill's had totally disrupted his work schedule. Nathan would have to start using his nights to catch up on his design work. Fortunately, his assistant would be competently handling the print side of his business.
From his perspective, the cops had completed about 50 percent of their interview of Jill. There had been so many happenings with her at the center. She understood the science of the weapon. She was leading a team doing research on the people in Graeme's life. He thought they needed another 2 to 3 hours of conversation, considering suspects, and planning next steps.
He slowly moved toward Jill and murmured to her while the members of the SFPD and the FBI conversed. “Do you need me here?” She gave a shake of her head.
He peered at the group."Guys, I am not of much use on this case at the moment. I will be in the other room getting some work done. You know where to find me."
Chapter 16
While the person from the security company diagnosed her system failure and retrieved 4 days of video from her multiple cameras, she contemplated next steps with members of law enforcement. Each of them had different perspectives. The SFPD needed to solve Graeme’s murder. He had been murdered in its jurisdiction. The FBI had a different focus. Agent Ortiz did not believe that she had a serial killer on her hands. The killer seemed to have one target and that was anyone with knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Graeme's murder. The role of the events and people in Puerto Rico had little
connection yet. Jill’s perspective was to fulfill her contract with Emma Spencer and still be alive in the decades to come.
"Any thoughts on why Emma Spencer has not been a target?" asked Jill.
"That's a good question for our criminal profilers. We will be connecting with our profiler later this evening. We’re waiting to see if the killer is on any of the camera recordings. His presence or lack thereof completely changes the profile."
"Agent Ortiz, do you mean that the killer has in-depth knowledge of security systems or not based on his presence or absence on any of the camera recordings?" questioned Jill.
"Yes, knowledge of electronics changes the profile. Also watching the behavior of the shooter on the tapes may influence the profile."
With that remark by Agent Ortiz, Jill decided that it was time to move on to other parts of the case. Detective Carlson was up to speed on the avenues that Jill was exploring. Her Lieutenant and the FBI were only broadly aware of the path that Jill’s group were taking to solve the case.
She started by giving all the detectives and agents a broad overview of her past work experience in the county crime lab and then moved on to the 40 to 50 cases that she had consulted on as a private pathologist. She followed that with the skills of Jo, Marie, and Angela.
While the FBI could outgun her with resources and computer systems, Jill was unwilling to relinquish the case into its very capable hands and sit tight waiting passively for the FBI to solve the crime. She felt a duty to Graeme and to Emma. She had the added incentive of staying alive herself to motivate her to solve the case.
Jill shared her deductive-reasoning flowchart with the group to explain her approach. Angela had taken the lead in eliminating suspects in Puerto Rico. She also agreed with Jill that Emma could be eliminated as a suspect.
“I believe that the Bureau would agree with your conclusions at this point.” stated Agent Ortiz.
"My associate, Jo, is reviewing the financial documents of the law firm. She has found nothing suspicious with the financial statements at this point. She is also evaluating Graeme’s trust and his purchase of his house. Again, everything seems in order. Finally, she reviewed the SEC filings of the start-up company that Graeme was so heavily involved with getting off the ground. No discrepancies there, either."
"My associate, Marie, is conducting background searches on the law firm's partners. In her daytime job, she does national and international candidate sourcing and verification. She will find any data on people, including criminal information, professional reputation, and what is being said in social media. With that kind of evaluation, she can put together a very accurate profile about someone."
"We need to get into Luis Gonzales's bank account, where perhaps we can trace who may have recently put money into his account for services rendered." Jill suggested to the group.
"Agent Brown will run down Gonzales’ bank account. You’re correct that this might be the easiest way to identify the killer. However, based on the science that it took to kill Graeme, I don’t think we’ll so easily solve this case."
Jill also doubted that it would be easy. So she moved on to discussion of where her research was focused.
"I reviewed Graeme's family next. Given that he did not make changes to the Will until after several attempts had been made on his life, it just doesn't seem to me that his family was involved. His parents were his original beneficiaries, but I couldn't find a motive there. They are wealthy. This is a very normal family with no criminal history, all of them with full-time jobs and no one in financial trouble. So I crossed family members off my list of suspects.
"Next, I flipped a coin as to whether to explore his partners or his clients. The coin toss led me to his partners. Other than speeding tickets, DUIs, and college marijuana charges, nothing raised red flags for the partner’s employees.
“Then I moved on to his client list. During his time with the legal firm, he was involved in approximately 400 cases. I eliminated all of the cases that had no additional pleadings filed. I considered that without additional pleadings that the law cases were without conflict. That brought the number down to approximately 170.
"That sounds like you were looking for a needle in a haystack.” Exclaimed Agent Ortiz admiringly! “I like your line of reasoning about the cases. You're trying to find that one person who's mad enough about something to kill Graeme."
"Yes, that is exactly what I was searching for. I took the 170 or so cases and searched amongst them for the ones that had 10 or more pleadings filed. I figured these were the really mad people. There was just one case where Graeme was the lead attorney. The other 9 cases, a law firm partner was the lead and Graeme was in the second chair. That one case with all the pleadings filed concerned the start-up that he helped get off the ground almost a decade ago. The opposing party in the matter was big pharma, and the pleadings appeared to be in a nuisance lawsuit. Graeme easily defeated the plaintiff. Likely a high school debate team member could have defeated the plaintiff, the lawsuit was that lame.”
"Nice approach to the analysis."
"Thanks, but I wasn't done with the client list. I didn't feel that I could dismiss all the cases just like that. So I went back and created a spreadsheet of the cases. I defined the cases by the type of law or pleading involved, a dollar amount if mentioned, and the date of the suit. I thought the date might eliminate some of the cases or the dollar amount might highlight some of the cases. I had gotten through 50 cases before the interruption this morning. Nothing is grabbing my attention yet.”
Just then, a knock sounded on Jill’s front door. Someone from the security company wanted to update her on his findings. She was starting to go stir crazy stuck inside her house all day. She figured that with the happenings of the morning, the shooter was not in the neighborhood. She invited the personnel from the SFPD and the FBI out onto her veranda. They could form a human shield for her while she got some fresh air and listened to what the technician had to say. She would never take her freedom for granted ever again!
"Let me make introductions. Brett Thackeray of Secure One, meet Detective Carlson and Lieutenant Chau of the SFPD and Agents Ortiz, Brown, and O'Sullivan of the San Francisco field office of the FBI. Brett is here to tell me about the breakdown with the security system."
"Ma'am, we just did a complete diagnostic on your system. It uses ultrasonic frequency to determine movement. Using a wave imitator to exactly duplicate the waveform of your system, your visitor was able to enter your property. We detected this activity because you have a 10-second delay on the alarm. The delay is built into to your system to stop it from going off whenever a bird, for example, crosses the perimeter. This is a standard feature of all systems, as you don't want to drive your neighbors nuts with frequent false alarms."
“Brett, tell me what you mean by imitator and how you could tell that my system had been hijacked," Jill asked the very questions that her law enforcement friends had been ready to ask.
"Your software showed where the alarm had been triggered but then re-set within that 10-second interval. I was also able to match that time with the approximate time of your 911 conversation. An imitator was designed by someone with engineering experience. To make this work, he or she would have needed to measure the wavelength frequency of your system and be able to dial it in to a device that would emit the same wavelength frequency. This would signal to your system that the wavelength was intact and there were no intruders.”
“I thought I had purchased a good system. Why wasn't I warned that it could be so easily tampered with? So what is the solution? Should you reduce the alarm delay to 4 seconds?”
"Dr. Quint, I have worked for Secure One for 20 years. With thousands of customers over that period of time, I've never seen the wavelength imitated like it was here. We read about imitator devices in the professional journal for security systems, but I've never seen one. Journal articles speculate about how such a device would be designed, but there's never been an acknowledgement that
such devices exist in the real world. As to reducing the alarm delay, I can do that, but you will have false negative alarms in great number. I also don't know how many seconds your intruder took to measure the wavelength. I can't measure that with our current system. So 4 seconds might still be too long, and you'd be back at the beginning with a lot of annoying alarms."
Jill asked the people from both the SFPD and the FBI if they had ever come across an imitator before. Lieutenant Chau could not recall any such device being used in a San Francisco breaking and entering case. Likewise, the FBI agents could not remember a case where such a device had been used, either. Like Brett indicated, they thought that such a device was more fantasy than fact since they read many of the same security news reports.
"I guess this again points to the fact that I have a scientist on my hands, one who can create bacterial weapons and security system imitators.” Jill sighed. “Brett, what about the cameras? Was he caught on camera anywhere? Have you spoken to anyone at your office to see if they have identified anybody on camera?"
“Someone at my office did find human movement on one of the cameras. That footage, including a date and time stamp, should have arrived in your e-mail inbox.”
Jill went inside the house to her laptop. As Brett had stated, an urgent e-mail appearing to contain the footage sat in her inbox. Before opening the attachment, she forwarded the e-mail to detective Carlson and Agent Brown. She brought the footage up on screen. A figure could be seen stealthily coming over the rise of the hillside that was her winery.
“Wow, this makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I see a figure moving across the screen moments before he tried to kill me." Jill remarked quietly.
Just then the screen went blank. They could tell that the camera was still recording by the time indicator on the screen, but there was nothing to view other than fuzzy white space.