Foreign Deceit

by Jeff Carson

  “Vlad! These two are looking for Dr. Rosenwald. I was telling them about how he hasn’t shown up in the last few days.” Wembly turned to Wolf. “This is Dr. Vlad. He knows Dr. Rosenwald on a more personal basis.”

  “Uhh, yes, I do not know where he is.” Vlad’s voice was raspy, like he hadn’t used it in a day or two. He cleared his throat for a few seconds.

  Vlad was a short, large, and sweaty individual. His jet black facial hair was sporadic, denser on the neck, and had obviously been growing for at least a week. Whether or not he had showered within that same week was a toss-up. Looking at his shining greasy mass of black hair, Wolf would have bet not. His dark gray shirt had darker still finger lined grease stains, undoubtedly from eating the potato chips from the bag splayed on his desk which sat in front of four empty Coke Lite cans. He wore dirty jeans and flip flops. A hand wasn’t offered as introduction, and Wolf thanked Jesus for that.

  “Have you talked to him this week at all?” Wolf asked.

  “No, I have not.” He shook his head.

  His accent sounded similar to Cristina’s. Romanian as well? Eastern European?

  Vlad’s shifty eyes darted between Wolf’s clothing, the wall behind him, and Director Wembly. “I have not spoken to him all week.” His glance rested on Wolf’s eyes for a split second before jumping to the wall behind him again.

  “So, you know Dr. Rosenwald on a personal basis? Do you guys spend a lot of time with each other?”

  “We have gone to have a beer or two after work a few times before,” said Vlad.

  “Have you met my brother before? His name is John Wolf?”

  “Oh yes, I have.” Vlad’s voice was suddenly quiet.

  “How did you meet him?”

  “I believe he has, eh, come out with Matthew with us for a beer after work a time or two.” Vlad’s forehead was glistening with sweat. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m asking because my brother was killed this weekend, and I’m looking for Matthew for some answers.”

  Vlad’s eyebrows shot up, “Oh, that’s terrible. I…”

  “You what?” Wolf asked.

  “I, I…that’s terrible. What happened?” He looked Wolf in the eye, then wiped his forehead with the palm of his hand.

  “He was killed in his apartment, and someone is trying to make it look like suicide.”

  “Oh, wow…” Vlad looked down, shaking his head, which slid a bead of sweat off his nose onto the terrazzo floor. “That’s terrible. And you think Matthew has something to do with it?” He pulled his pants up and smoothed his shirt.

  “That’s what we’re checking. Was there a particular bar you guys went to for beers?” Wolf asked.

  “Yeah, well, no,” his face flushed red and his eyebrows raised for a split second.

  “Did you guys ever used to go to the,” he fished the receipt out of his pocket, “Albastru Pub?”

  Lia glanced at Wolf with a furrowed brow.

  “Uh, yeah. We’ve been there before,” Vlad said.

  “What were you doing Friday night?” Wolf put the receipt back in his jeans pocket.

  “I was working in the office, actually,” he said. “I was here quite late on Friday night.”

  “You weren’t with them at the pub getting a beer that night?”

  “What? No.” He was excited now. “I was at work all night. I had a lot of work to catch up on.”

  Wolf paused for a few seconds and stared unblinking. “Okay, thanks, Dr. Vlad. And you didn’t see Matthew or my brother at all this weekend?”

  He shook his head, “No, I’m sorry. I haven’t.”

  “So what do you do here? Are you an astronomer as well?”

  “Me? I, uh, I work for the European Astronomical Council, and I am overseeing the re-furbishing of the Zeiss telescope currently housed in this facility.”

  “Vlad is a very important man in the world of astronomical equipment, Mr. Wolf,” Wembly said. “In any given month, a lot of astronomical equipment is exchanged between countries and continents, and Dr. Vlad has become the top man for the EAC to oversee its logistics. We are lucky to have him on site here.” Wembly wore a proud expression.

  Vlad nodded his head with closed eyes and held up his hand.

  Wolf took this as a deflection of an apparently shameless suck up maneuver from the director. Wolf nodded back to Vlad. “Where are you from?”

  “I’m from Cluj, Romania.”

  “And what about Dr. Rosenwald? What does he do here?”

  “He works on our Gamma-ray astronomy team with Dr. Chang there.” Wembly pointed toward the center of the building.

  “Okay. Mr. Wembly —”

  “Doctor Wembly…never mind, sorry, it doesn’t matter.” He shook his head and squinted his eyes in apology.

  “Dr. Wembly,” Wolf corrected, “how did he get to work? By car?”

  “Yes, he drove a car.”

  “And what is the make, model, and color of it?”

  “It’s a, um…oh, you know better than I, Dr. Vlad. What did he drive?” Wembly asked.

  Vlad was pulled from deep thought. “He drives a blue Fiat Panda.”

  Wolf looked back to Dr. Wembly, “Do you mind if we question Dr. Chang? And can we please have Dr. Rosenwald’s address? Do you have that on file?”

  “Yes, I believe I do. Let me fetch it for you.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Vlad. We’ll be in touch if we need anything else.”

  Vlad stuck out his hand to shake. Wolf walked out the door.

  Dr. Chang was in his office down the hall three doors, cradling a tea cup with both hands, looking intently at his computer screen.

  “Dr. Chang?” Wolf knocked on the open door.

  “Yes?” Dr. Change looked up through steamy glasses.

  “You work with Mathew Rosenwald, correct?”

  “Yes.” He put down his cup and turned to them.

  “Have you seen him or heard from him in the last few days?” Lia asked.

  “No, I have not.”

  “Is that usual?” Wolf asked. “To not hear from him for days?”

  Chang furrowed his brow and stood, crossing his arms. He wore a white lab coat unbuttoned and draped over his blue t-shirt and tight jeans. He wore large Buddy Holly style glasses that looked way too big for his face, and had tall spiky hair. “No, it is not usual. We usually keep in touch, and he has missed some important milestones for our work earlier this week, in fact.”

  “And what is that work exactly?” Wolf asked.

  “We were, uh,” he hesitated.

  Wolf didn’t blink. “What’s the matter?”

  “Well, I don’t know how to explain it, other than in a way that won’t make sense to you, I’m sure.”

  “Try me.”

  “We…we were shaping X-ray beams via deformable mirrors. We have been analytically computing the required mirror profile.”

  Wolf looked blankly at Dr. Chang. “Do you have a relationship with Dr. Rosenwald outside the work place?”

  “Uh, no. Not at all, actually,” he said pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, as if realizing it for the first time.

  “Were you with him at the bar this weekend getting beers? Or did you see him this weekend?”

  “Uh, no. Like I said, I didn’t ever socialize with Dr. Rosenwald outside of work.” He looked to Lia and Dr. Wembly. “What’s this all about?”

  “Never mind. Thanks for your time Dr. Chang. If you hear from him, can you please call this number?” Wolf looked to Lia, and she gave a phone number.

  They asked Dr. Wembly a few more questions and left mid morning with Dr. Rosenwald’s address in hand.

  Chapter 19

  “What was that all about with Dr. Chang?” She revved the RPM’s to pass two trucks. “Why were you pressing him about the work?”

  “I wanted to ask him that question before asking him about Dr. Rosenwald. To see his reactions. He wasn’t hiding anything. Not like Dr. Vlad was. That guy was a comical liar. I’m surpr
ised he didn’t start dry-heaving right in front of us.”

  “Yes.” She smirked while cranking a particularly tight left turn. “I admit he was acting strange. And, where did you get that receipt?”

  “I picked it up at the morgue.”

  She stared at him for a moment then went wide-eyed. “You took that when you pretended to almost pass out!”

  “I wasn’t pretending. I almost passed out.”

  M. Rosenwald said the label next to the ever-present wrought iron gate outside of the apartment building. Lia pushed the button and waited.

  “No answer.” Wolf smacked a mosquito on his neck.

  The apartment was along the same wide river that dumped out of Lake Como, a few minutes’ drive to the north, halfway between the observatory and the city of Lecco. The building was large, containing thirty or more apartments, and built directly within a hollowed out section of a steep hill that sloped to the water.

  “I don’t think he is home.”

  Wolf bent forward. “Is there a building manager button?” He waged war on two more mosquitoes hovering around his ears.

  “I don’t see one.” She shrugged.

  “Okay, you do the talking.” Wolf pushed five buttons in quick succession.

  She turned and gave Wolf a dirty look, hands on her slender hips.

  “Pronto?”

  “Pronto?” Two people answered almost simultaneously.

  “Buon giorno. Siamo iCaribinieri. Lasciateci entrare?”

  The gate buzzed and clicked open, then buzzed again.

  “Okay, now let’s go get a closer look.” Wolf pushed through the gate.

  “Is this how they do it in Colorado?”

  “Nope. We don’t have fences like this where I come from.”

  They climbed the stairs to Dr. Rosenwald’s floor and ran into a concerned looking old woman poking her head out the door.

  She and Lia had a brief conversation.

  “What did she say?”

  “She hasn’t seen him.”

  A knock at the door produced no response from inside, no sounds at all.

  “Would you object to me picking this lock?” Wolf raised an eyebrow.

  “I…could you do that?”

  “I could. They don’t teach that here in your military?”

  “I don’t remember learning that skill, no.” She smirked. “Well, in Italy, we do not need a warrant for drugs to search a person’s property. Since your brother had drugs in his system on the night of his death, and he was with this person on the night of his death…then, I don’t see any problem with us entering this apartment on suspicion of drugs.”

  “Okay, good. I’m going to need some things — I need something that is long and thin metal, and I haven’t seen a lock like this in my life. I say let’s go to the old lady’s apartment and see what we can get there.” He turned to walk down the hallway.

  Lia reached down and turned the door knob. With a soft click the door creaked open to the inside.

  She swept her hand at the door. “They don’t teach that skill in the American military?”

  “Huh. No I don’t remember learning that. Touché.” He stepped in.

  The apartment was dimly lit. A corridor hallway inside the entrance was lined with a body length mirror and framed painting that looked to be Australian aboriginal art.

  Two doors were closed on the right hand side and a brightly lit bigger room was at the end of the narrow hallway.

  “Hello?” Wolf called into the apartment.

  Lia flipped a light switch and the hall flooded with yellow light. She shut the door, suffocating all outside noise.

  He caught the smell her breath as she turned toward him, and then the lavender scent of her hair. The apartment was completely silent save the gentle rustle of Lia’s clothing.

  Wolf was aware he’d passed beyond the act of looking to staring. “I’ll check this door.” He turned and opened the nearest door, revealing Rosenwald’s bedroom. A queen sized bed lay un-made with two shirts strewn across it. A dirty clothes wicker basket was filled to the brim giving the room a musty body-odor smell. The screen-less window was open a crack, and Wolf felt another tiny sting and slapped his forearm.

  A distant thunder rumbled outside, shaking the building deep. Light dimmed by the second. A mid-day thunderstorm was building outside somewhere within the haze.

  “Pretty nice place!” Lia’s voice was somewhere else in the apartment. He left the room and followed her voice down the hall into a large living room that had vaulted ceilings. There were two massive windows set in an exposed brick wall that looked out on the river, filling the room with subdued natural light. The opposite wall was painted Italian-flag-green. From it hung a medium sized flat screen television. Australian landscape photography and paintings adorned the rest of the wall space. It was thoughtfully and tastefully designed with attention to detail. There was a leather couch, dark wood end tables and a kitchenette with a table where Lia was digging in a back pack.

  “Notice the coffee table over there.” She nodded her head toward it.

  Looking, Wolf saw a small pile of Euro coins, a few pieces of paper, and a tiny white bag. It looked like a bag of cocaine. He picked it up and looked closely. It looked and smelled like it at least.

  “So, Matthew here is also using cocaine,” she said.

  “I don’t think my brother was using cocaine.”

  “Sorry.” She gave him a sideways glance. “What about what the coroner’s report?”

  “It said there was residue on his nose. There weren’t any blood tests done.”

  “True.”

  He closed and pocketed the tiny bag and they began a thorough search of the apartment. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary for a single male from Australia, living his life as a Gamma-ray astronomer in a foreign country. Other than the bag of coke that is. Receipts were strewn about on the kitchen counter, none giving any clues to anything but his diet, which consisted of a lot of vegetables from the local supermarket.

  “There’s no phone. That reminds me, can we look at phone records for my brother and this guy? There may be some clues there. We should have the cell phone company ping his phone as well to see where it’s at, if there’s any charge left in it. Did it go straight to voice mail when you called it earlier?”

  “Yes, it did.”

  “Okay, that says something. He’s not charging his phone. Maybe he knows someone could trace his phone if he charged it. Maybe he’s running. I don’t see his car keys anywhere. What about his passport? I haven’t seen one, have you?”

  “No.” She looked around with her hands out.

  “Okay, so he has his passport also. Can we trace movement with his passport?”

  “Probably not. At least, it’s not easy. Schengen rules allow free travel between most European countries. Most countries don’t even have electronic passport control of any kind. There will be a guard, and he will look at the passport, and done.” She swiped her hands together as if wiping off crumbs. “We can check of course, but it is very difficult to trace by passport now. We can check his credit cards and cell phone.”

  “You have a person in the Caribinieri that does all this stuff?”

  “Yes.” She smiled. “there is a guy who does all this stuff. He is the technical genius of the office.”

  A close thunder rumbled long and slow, followed by a deluge of rain drops hitting the roof and windows.

  “We’ll have him check on Dr. Rosenwald’s car as well,” she said. “He can get the registration.”

  “I wonder if he could hack into my brother’s computer at the same time.”

  “If it can be done, he will be able to do it.”

  I’d also like to take a thorough look at the police report, or whatever you call it here in Italy,” he said. “All after we go to the Albastru Pub.”

  “Is that all?” She looked at him facetiously.

  “I hope that’s all. Yeah.”

  A white flash of lightning lit
the interior of the apartment, followed by a deafening boom that rolled into the distance.

  Chapter 20

  Lia cut a chunk off her Margherita pizza. “So, what’s it like in Colorado?”

  “It’s a beautiful state. There aren’t nearly as many people as here, at least where I come from, in the mountains. Some days you’ll see more animals than other people. I love it.”

  They sat inside a crowded pizzeria along the river while it poured rain outside. Pizza and cokes and water were served — much needed fuel.

  “Have you been there your whole life?”

  “Most of it. I was in the military for a number of years right out of high school, then I returned.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Really? Where did you serve?”

  “I was stationed in Washington.”

  “Where did you go?”

  He laughed at her intense interest. “Pacific Rim. Mostly Asia and Australia.”

  “Oh, wow. That must have been amazing.” She shook her head and sipped her Coke. “Did you see any action?”

  “Nah, not much,” he lied. “I was lucky. Just a nice tour of the world.”

  She stared at nothing for a beat, then shook her head sharply. “What is your position on the police force there?”

  “I’m a…Sergeant”

  “Is that a bad subject or something?”

  “Well, it’s an interesting time for my career at the moment. There’s a possibility I’ll be appointed to Sheriff on Monday.”

  Her eyebrows raised high. “Really? Monday? Wow, congratulations?”

  “Yeah, not congratulations yet.”

  They sat in silence as he swilled another small glass of water. “That’s if a few things go right, of course.”

  “What do you mean? Do you not have the job already?”

  “No, I don’t. I have to be appointed by the Town Council, which means I have to be unanimously chosen by all of the members.”

  “Yes…and?”

  “Well, I hurt a guy pretty bad before I left, and his father happens to be on the Town Council.”

  “Uh oh.” She leaned forward on her elbows. “And you are a bit worried?”