by Alec Peche
While she waited for a loaner car, she called her mother in Arizona to tell her the story. She needed to hear that her daughter was safe before hearing of the incident in the media. At first her mother hadn’t believed her because the story was so strange. However, the story had come on her mother’s local news station, and she wanted to listen to the TV. Assured that her daughter was fine, and they ended the call with a plan to talk later that evening.
With the old car towed away and the loaner car delivered, Trixie and Jill were set to make the drive home. Jill was very apprehensive about what she would find. At worse, her house would be burned to the ground. Possibly it would have bullet holes in the windows and perhaps have had rocket launched at it. The best case scenario was that it was fully intact with no apparent change. As she drove, she saw a call come in from Nathan. She had left him a voice-mail to contact her upon landing, hoping he wouldn’t hear of her shootout on an airport TV.
As he was up to speed on the case, she only needed to update him about Lark and the episode at the Sheriff’s station. This time she didn’t hold back in her description of events, as she knew that he would see the story on the news. She reached her driveway as she was three-quarters of the way through the story. She paused in her conversation as she turned through her gates and approached the house. She had gratefully seen the house from the road. Now she could see that it was unharmed. Lark’s copter must have landed, discovered her absence, and then took off searching for her car on nearby roads or in town.
She exited the car and settled on her front stoop. Trixie made a run around the property checking the smells out. She finished telling Nathan the story as well as commented that her property was unharmed. There was dead silence on his end for a minute.
Finally he formed words. “Wow, just when I have heard the peak of your crazy story with this case, you find a weirder angle still to add. I've known Sheriff Arstand for at least 10 years, and the next time I see him I will thank him for saving your life. I have to tell you that I'm having a hard time comprehending how crazy your life got during the past 4 hours. Frankly, if I had been unaware of the whole strange story, I would not believe your description of what just happened. I’d be getting you help from mental health experts for your hallucinations. I'm frustrated that I am 2,000 miles away in Seattle and not there to help you. I have a second car. It's not the best, but you can borrow it to get rid of that rental car.
“I was planning on returning in 2 more days, but I feel that I need to come back this evening. I care deeply for you, and I feel badly that I haven't been with you when you needed help the most over these past several days."
Jill was stunned at this revelation.
"Nathan, wow. I'm actually relieved to hear you say all that. I was afraid you were going to dump me as your girlfriend after I told you about this latest incident. I am sort of scary girlfriend material these days.”
"Jill, I realize that your work giving others a second opinion is intellectually important to your soul, and I respect that. While I don't like all the dangerous situations you have been in during the last couple of weeks, they are not situations of your making. You’re the victim here. Besides, since we've been dating, you had 10 other cases in which no one tried to kill you. So let's hope that your case load goes back to normal," Nathan said with a laugh.
"I'm back at home now, and from what I can see on the outside, Lark and company did not damage my house. However, I’m taking a walk through now just to make sure. Certainly in the distance the vineyard appears untouched. I'll go over to the wine cellar and my lab to make sure everything is in working order. Why don’t you give me a call later tonight after you have reached your destination and had a relaxing meal with your client? I think you should stay in Washington, I am fine here. I need to go inside and make some coffee. The adrenaline rush of 2 hours ago is dying a very quick death inside me.” Jill ended the conversation.
Jill saw nothing disturbed at the house. She wondered if the helicopter had even been to her home. As she looked around the land, there were not many options for a flat and clear landing area. She didn’t see dust stirred up anywhere like there had been copter blades close to the ground. So had they spotted her car from the air? Perhaps she had carried some kind of tracking device on her so Lark knew immediately where she was. She thought back to what she had taken to the Sheriff station. Her purse, a light weight jacket, and Trixie's leash. She did not know what a tracking device looked like, so she simply looked through her stuff to see if anything was out of order. If it was on the car, then in the immediate future, it wouldn’t be serving as a GPS.
Jill completed the search of the vineyard, her wine cellar, and her lab. Everything looked undisturbed. Next she went through her purse and her cell phone and couldn't find anything she thought might look like a tracking device.
She wanted to bring closure to the case. Using her forms, she completed and filed the paperwork. Then she did a summation of everything and e-mailed it to Emma, Jo, Marie, Angela, the detectives and agents in San Francisco. The case was now closed.
She would call her insurance company tomorrow and go through the steps of filing a claim for her car. She would need to get the police report from the Sheriff and the insurance company could take it from there.
The Schmidt Industries helicopter encounter at the Sheriff’s station played out on the national news, and she wondered how many more minutes of free time she had before the media caught up with her. She spent a few minutes weighing her options in her approach to the media. The media could be a hassle, so instead she gave thought as to what it could do for her business.
It was too bad that she didn’t have signage up advertising the winery’s first production run. It would be great free publicity. Jill could say no comment. Or, at the opposite extreme, she could be a good sport and describe her story to every media outlet. Neither of the extremes sounded good to her.
She needed to talk to Jo, Marie, and Angela to get their feedback as to whether their names should be mentioned to any media. She sent a text message to the 3 of them to see if they were available to chat. Luck was with her. They were all at Jo's house prior to going out for dinner. She gave them 5 minutes to read the case summary and then called them in Wisconsin.
"Hey how's it going? I'm lucky to catch the 3 of you together.”
"First, we’re happy that you're safe, and second, we’re happy that we don't live your life. You may have great weather in California, but we don't have helicopters chasing us in Wisconsin," commented Jo with a laugh.
"Yeah, I could do with some snow and a boring life right about now. I hit rock bottom an hour ago after the most amazing adrenaline rush in my life dissipated. I had a big cup of coffee and sort of rebounded back to normal. So I was watching the nightly news, and the story is playing out on television. I figure that sooner or later some reporter is going to contact me about this case. So my question to the 3 of you is do you want me to mention you by name?"
“At the moment we say no, but let us talk it over during dinner and drinks to see if we change our minds,” said Marie.
“I wish I was there dining with you. I thought you would say no, but let me know if you change your minds over dinner.”
They spoke for a few more minutes than Jill ended the call. While she had been on her cell phone with them, her house phone had rung 3 separate times and she had voice-mails waiting for her. She walked to her phone just as it rang again. She decided then that she would screen all of her callers. Thankfully, her cell phone was blissfully silent. She listened to the messages. She thought about her property and went outside. Normally she kept the gates open to her driveway. She shut and latched the gates. She hoped that would keep people off her property. She left Trixie outside to sound the alarm.
She went back inside and decided to call the FBI spokesperson that she had met at the debriefing to discuss what information to release. She did not think that there were any secrets except perhaps the location of the safehouse. Rea
lly, though, if Aleksandra had found it, was it really a secret? The spokesperson was busy giving interviews. No surprise there. So Jill decided that she would go at it her own way. Rather than speak to each news agency separately, she would appear outside her gates in 3 hours. That would give the media a chance to arrive if they were interested in her version of the incident, and give her a chance to prepare a statement, which she would begin by reading. She would then answer questions and was prepared to withhold all the names that she could.
Now the question was how to get the word out. She didn’t want to e-mail or call members of the media, as then they would have her private information. So instead she simply posted a sign on her gates with the announcement of the press conference. She would see how well the old-fashioned way of communicating worked. She put the notice in large font on a letter-sized piece of paper and with tape in hand walked out to her gates. At the gate, she knew that her system would work because there were already 2 media vans in the vicinity.
The 2 media crews rushed her gate with microphones and cameras in hand. She ignored them, taped up the sign, and walked back to her house to work on her statement. It took her 20 minutes to describe the entire case and give lots of kudos to all of the members of law enforcement who had kept her alive. Her 3 goals were to tell her story just once, compliment law enforcement, and get the word out just a bit about her business of giving second opinions. Finally, the FBI's public spokesperson returned her call and gave her a few pointers, but basically she was on her own.
At the appointed time, she went outside and slipped through her gates leaving Trixie behind. She wanted to avoid having her driveway and house as the background while she spoke. She walked to the other side of the road and turned around, ready to face the cameras. She looked briefly around her and counted at least 20 crews. Where had they come from? Palisades Valley did not have its own network affiliate, so everyone at the press conference had to have come from a distance of at least 70 to 100 miles. Wow.
She did not own a podium, which became immediately apparent as multiple microphones were stuck in her line of vision. She couldn’t concentrate and talk like that. This was creating a problem, as the news teams had no where to place their microphones. In the end, she moved back to her side of the road. The media people duct-taped their microphones to her fence, which worked well, and the nearby trees hid her property and vineyard.
She read her statement, which took all of 5 minutes. The media wanted a copy of it, but she decided not to release her statement. She took a few questions and then announced that she was done and would have no further comment ever on the case. Any additional questions should be referred to law enforcement. She was relieved to return to her house and relax. She was finished with the case of Graeme St. Louis.
Jill and Nathan spoke later that night. He had seen her on the local news in Washington. It was a sensational story that had captured the imagination of the national media. He thought she'd handled the situation well. Give the facts once. Answer a few questions and promise to never again speak about the case. Like her, he was optimistic that the media would go away and stay away.
"How was dinner with your client?" asked Jill.
She was secretly happy to talk about his work. It felt so normal after several tense weeks.
“It was great. Your involvement in this national case increased my prestige since you’re my girlfriend,” said Nathan, tongue in cheek.
“That sounds like a typical dumb guy remark. You know that if I was standing there next to you in Seattle, you would have just felt a blow to your solar plexus.”
“As you know, I’ve known this client for years, since before either of us made a name for ourselves in the wine world. So we catch up on our lives, gossip about the industry, and talk football. He is a Seahawks fan, and I’m a Packers fan, so we have to talk trash on that bad ref call early in the 2012-13 season.”
“Sounds like a great time. Have you discussed his new label yet?”
“Not really, we had so many other things to discuss. He has an impressive restaurant attached to his winery, and I was too busy eating some amazing dishes. He had melt-in-your mouth steak. Everything was excellent, and dessert was a chocolate pastry paired with cognac. I couldn’t have a serious conversation after all that gourmet delight. I feel like I have just eaten Thanksgiving dinner and all I want to do is go to bed and sleep.”
“That is my idea of a great evening. I am not a fan of chocolate, but everything else sounds great. I think you should find another glass of cognac and head off to dreamland. Things are calm here finally, and I’m looking forward to working on the vineyard tomorrow. I also researched that martial arts show you wanted to go to, and I have it on my calendar.”
“Great! I am looking forward to watching the exhibition and watching you watch the various martial arts. I think you’ll like learning one of the arts, and certainly you’ll be better able to defend yourself, if you should ever need to in the future.”
“Well, sweet dreams, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Love you, Nathan” and Jill ended the call.
Jill walked to her kitchen to cook dinner. It had been such a dramatic day that she felt like she could eat an entire pizza by herself. Instead, she had the ingredients for a chicken quesadilla to be paired with a couple glasses of her Moscato. Trixie was sniffing for some treats as well. So Jill would take care of her first.
They ate in harmony, listening to some pop music. Jill then spent some time on the Internet catching up on news and wine-growing discussions. It was such a relaxing way to spend the evening, and she had felt out of touch for the last few weeks, as her world had narrowed to solving the case. After a couple of hours, she felt sleepy and retired to bed.
Chapter 30
Jill awoke to a day that promised to be sunny and warm. Since she had run the previous day, she would get her exercise working in her vineyard. She had a great cup of coffee with breakfast and then went outside to work.
She was armed with 3 different types of pruning shears, gloves, a special nutrient that she had created to strengthen the vines, and a wheelbarrow to take away her trimmings. She often listened to music when she worked outside, but today she was content to soak in the sun and listen to the birds chirp.
She worked all morning until it was time to break for lunch. She spoke with her mother just after breakfast and Nathan mid-morning. He had no ill effects from the cognac indulgence the night before, which was good. Trixie had intermittently played fetch with a ball all morning.
As she started to make a turkey and cheese sandwich, her cell phone rang, and she could see that it was Agent Ortiz. She supposed that she was calling to wrap up the case on her end. She hoped that her press conference hadn’t upset anyone in law enforcement.
“Hello.”
“Jill, how are you this morning?”
“Fabulous, I just spent the morning out among my grape vines. It was the first day in several weeks that I wasn’t worried or thinking of the case. How are you doing? How is Agent O’Sullivan?”
“I am afraid I am calling with bad news. We just got the preliminary crime scene information report. There was no female DNA in the 4 bodies recovered from the crash site of Lark’s company helicopter. Seems that sometime after the Sheriff’s deputy shot her and when everyone jumped aboard the copter, Lark vanished into the town.”
“Oh, no! Just when I thought my life was back to normal.”
“I contacted the Sheriff’s office prior to calling you, and he has a deputy on his way to pick you up and keep you safe until Agents Brown and O’Sullivan arrive to take over that duty. We are going to need to take you back to the safehouse.”
“Crap. I’ll have to bring my dog as well. Nathan is out of town, and I would think that Trixie would be her own target.”
While she was talked to Agent Ortiz, she paced around her house looking out the windows. She saw the Sheriff’s car enter her driveway. She had kept the driveway closed overnight but had re-opened the gates this m
orning. She would have hated to have to go out there now and unlock the gate.
“The Sheriff’s car just pulled into my driveway. Yeah! How far away are your agents?”
“At least another 70 minutes.”
“Let me pack a bag for Trixie and I and I’ll lock up and see if the Sheriff can drive me toward the agents. I’ll call you after I speak with the deputy.”
Jill hung up her phone and checked Trixie’s whereabouts. She did not want to waste any time hunting down the dog at this time. She was happy to see that it was Deputy Davis who had come to escort her into the FBI’s capable hands. She loved that the deputy was such a fabulous markswoman. In less than 5 minutes she had her bag packed and had Trixie’s leash and treats, and they were out the door heading for the patrol car.
She hadn’t had time to set her alarm, so she would call the alarm company from the road and request someone there to re-set it. Both she and Trixie sat in the backseat behind the custody bars of the police car. She was glad that she was riding in the car for protection rather than because she was on her way to jail.
Jill said to the deputy in the front seat, "I was so glad to see you driving this car when it pulled into my driveway. You are such an excellent shot that I know I'm well protected.”
Deputy Davis looked into her rear view mirror. "Jill, these bad people who are after you have brought more excitement to the small town of Palisades Valley than at any time in its history. I'm both honored and nervous about driving you to meet the FBI agents. I hope to make it to the meeting place without having to use my shooting skills."
They were 4 miles from the Interstate. Deputy Davis would heave a sigh of relief once she hit the Interstate and could go faster. If another Lark copter reached them before she passed Jill off to the FBI, it would be quite the fight: Sheriff's car versus helicopter. The deputy had thought about the route for the next 50 minutes. She planned in her head where they could take cover if Lark sent another helicopter after Jill. She was glad that she had had Jill and the dog put bullet proof vests on, and Jill wore a riot helmet as well. In the end, she decided that they were better off if she shared her game plan with Jill.