The Gold Coin

by Eddy Rogers

  “Sure. They’re both beneficiaries, and you’re in charge. If either of them turns out to be the killer, we can paste over the payment. Only the other beneficiaries could object.”

  “Good. Please do it. Thanks.” Needless to say, Johnson surprised me. Perhaps he had a heart after all.

  Carla and I spent the weekend enjoying our privacy and talking of the happy events to come. I could feel that our having a John junior or a little girl had already made us closer than ever, notwithstanding Carla’s being obsessed with the pregnancy. Shopping for baby stuff. Everything had to be planned in advance. No problem. Since her doctor urged her to exercise, we both got on a fitness regimen. The spinoff benefits so far outweighed the added burdens.

  Larry came back midday Monday, all pumped. As he got out of his car, he said excitedly, “We finally have progress. HPD has a source deep in the druggie crowd who gives them information in exchange for their not prosecuting him on multiple minor drug charges. He knows he needs to cooperate and tell the truth or he’s toast. HPD heard that a key member of Houston’s MS-13 boasted that he’d killed a woman for sixty grand. They followed up with their inside source. That guy identified the braggart as Orlando Pena. Pena’s a known drug runner, bringing drugs up from near Brownsville. Quite a wily character. He’s been stopped a number of times along I-10 between San Antonio and Houston. His vehicle’s always different but searched top to bottom, and the police never find any drugs. Dogs don’t smell anything. And yet, HPD says that DEA knows that major quantities of meth and weed arrive whenever Pena returns to Houston from the border. They think that Pena may be acting as a decoy, with the real carrier following behind him close enough to get by when Pena’s been stopped. Either that or the drugs are hidden in the gas tank where they couldn’t be detected in a search.

  “I’m close to the detective who replaced me. Jim Peterson. He wants our murder solved too but can’t be officially involved until we have something hard. Word is that Pena was hired by a gringo. Being bored and laying low for a while, Pena agreed to do the hit. He said he broke into the home of the victim and bragged that he got sixty thousand for doing her in. HPD can’t right now haul Orlando in without exposing the source, since they don’t know who else Pena told. Our source didn’t have a name for the victim, so it may or may not be Betty. I’ve checked with Dallas, Austin and San Antonio and there are at least two open cases involving women murdered at home, one of them in Houston. We need probable cause to pick him up. He’ll deny everything when we confront him. Right now we don’t have enough concrete information on him. We need that to confirm whether he’s tied to Betty’s murder.”

  “Can we get a picture of Pena? That way we could go to the motels and see if anyone can identify him.”

  “Already on that. He’s posed for the State police and HPD photographers multiple times, so I’ll get Jim Peterson to email us mug shots. You should get Bob to send us a mug shot of Rivera too One or the other of them may be involved. Both are bad guys, especially Pena.”

  “Since whoever killed her took her gold, is there any chance of the police finding out whether Pena is selling gold?”

  Larry laughed. “If he did steal the stuff, he’ll let any gold cool off before he starts selling anything. After that he’d go to a pawn shop rather than a precious metals dealer. HPD has good relationships with the pawn shops in Houston. They report anything suspicious.”

  “Let’s go in and talk with Carla. She has news for you, and we can get a sandwich and a beer while we relax.”

  “You’re the perfect host!”

  When we got inside, Carla smiled with the look of someone about to reveal a secret and said “Larry, we wanted you to be one of the first to know. John’s going to be a father around the Fourth of July next year.”

  Larry smiled broadly, taking on the demeanor of a grandfather. “That’s wonderful! Congratulations. John sure needs another heir. Do you know whether it’s a boy or girl?”

  “Not yet, but as soon as we know, you’ll know. We may have to have you change bedrooms when you visit so I can do baby decorating,”she said, brimming with excitement.

  “Happy to do that, but be careful enlisting me to take care of the young’un. I haven’t held a baby in decades, and I have no idea how those new-fangled disposable diapers work.”

  “You’re excused. At least until we can train you,” I joked. Larry went to his room to get settled, and Carla went to to our bedroom to take a nap. The pregnancy made her tired. I seized the opportunity to run to the office to work on Betty’s asset inventory. Not one response to my newspaper ad calling for people to let me know if she owed them anything.

  I called Bob to relay Larry’s information from HPD about Pena. I said, “If the story pans out, we have the murderer identified, but who else was involved remains in question. Both Johnson and Blaise, we now know from Ed Crowe’s report, had criminal acquaintances. Have you had a chance to read it?”

  “Not yet. Too much going on here.”

  I knew that Bob had a full caseload to deal with. I went on anyway. “If Betty told Blaise the details of her last codicil, and if Blaise worried that he’d be cut off by Betty, he had the motive to arrange a hit. Rivera went to his church. Same considerations for Johnson. You and I couldn’t tolerate our wives having sex with multiple other partners. Johnson may know Pena, so he could have gotten Pena to do the dirty deed. I could see Johnson getting fed up with her lifestyle. If Johnson knew the provisions of her codicil, that he was the executor and a one-quarter beneficiary, he might be motivated to arrange her demise. The estate lawyers who do the wills at Brown and Cutsinger always advise their clients to give a copy of their wills to the executor so he or she isn’t taken off guard if the maker of the will dies. So if either Johnson or Blaise expected to inherit five or six million, money alone would give us the motive. Blaise certainly knows Rivera, and well. He may be the culprit, not Pena. And then there’s the random possibility that the culprit is Harold at Austin Security. I keep forgetting to check him out. All this makes my head spin. I wish we had this damn thing solved so we could move on.”

  “Agreed,” said Bob. “Now we’ve got to close the connection between Pena and the others involved in the chain if we can. Let me think how we do that. Check with Larry and see if it’s okay for me to contact and work with Jim Peterson. Can’t do this by myself.”

  •••

  The next day Bob sent me the mug shots. I hoped that I never had to pose for one. Worse than the drivers’ license photos. Both of them look angry and sullen. Mean and ready for trouble.

  For comic relief from the stress of the Longstreet matter, I had municipal court that Wednesday. To my surprise, when I parked by the Byars Building where court is held, a large crowd had gathered outside the building. I presumed that most of them wanted a place to smoke, but the crowd was too large for that. As I walked in, standing by the urn where people could dispose of their cigarettes, Bruto Rivera stood, leaning onto the side of the building. When he saw me in coat and tie, he took his cigarette, or rather cigarillo — one of those cigars shaped like a cigarette — and mashed it angrily into the sand of the disposal urn. The cigarillo had a bright silver band on it. Must have been expensive.

  The courtroom was overflowing. The bailiff, Curt Koch, a retired police officer, sat at the table where Judge Green held forth, going over papers.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Drug dog,” he replied.

  “What?”

  “The police department’s gotten a drug dog and the officer who handles it, and the dog’s done his work in spades. Not only is the drug dog helping interdict drug traffic going from the border to and through Dallas, but Fido’s turned up a number of local offenders. When the police arrest someone with a minor amount of weed, they cite the person for possession of paraphernalia, since it’s just a misdemeanor. Arresting a violator for a felony requires a trip to the c
ounty jail and several hours of paperwork, and the police have bigger fish to fry.”

  As usual, when Judge Green arrived, we stood up at attention. The judge then said a few words how the court and court proceedings worked, and then Koch took roll, reading down the list of he accuseds, all but twenty percent drug or paraphernalia charges. There were sixty people packed into the small room. Standing room only. When Koch got to the “R’s”, Bruto Rivera’s name was called, and he responded loudly. To add to my surprise, at the “S’s”, Paul Scranton’s name was called. Odd. I looked at the charge sheets and both had been cited for possession of less than four grams of weed, a misdemeanor. It seemed like forever before Judge Green waded through the others and got to Rivera. Younger than I had thought from the way he looked, Rivera presented himself as a clean-cut member of society. Forty-five or more. Clean-shaven, unlike most of his mug shots. Green asked him for a plea, and Rivera looked down. “No contest, your honor.” Not that a no contest plea would do anything, as in effect he was pleading guilty. Green asked him whether he had prior offenses and his means of employment, knowing full well that he had a long rap sheet and allegedly led a bunch of drug dealers in south Blanco County.

  “I do car repairs and odd jobs,” Rivera said. “Just get by.” Green knew it was bullshit so assessed the maximum fine of two hundred dollars. Bruto pulled out a wad of bills, and Green reacted. “Don’t ever pay me or any other judge. Go to the court clerk next door and pay the fine.” I could tell that Green wished that the fine was larger.

  “Wait a minute, Bruto,” I said. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure. Who are you?”

  “The city attorney and prosecutor here. Where were you the evening of the twenty-third of October?”

  “How the hell would I know,” he replied. “I don’t even know where I was last Saturday.” The courtroom erupted in laughter.

  “I’d like to interview you in the next day or two. Where will you be?”

  “Are you a cop or something?”

  “No, but one will be at the interview.”

  “Not interested unless you got a subpoena.” You could see the audience wondering what that was all about. Bruto strolled out of the room to pay his fine.

  Shortly after finishing with Rivera, Judge Green got to Paul Scranton, charged also with possession of weed. Asked for a plea, Scranton also said “No contest” and asked for deferred adjudication. If the judge granted that, the charge against him would be dismissed after a probationary period, during which time Scranton could not get any new charges filed against him. Knowing who he was, the judge said, “I don’t normally grant deferred for drug cases. Tell me your story and we’ll see.”

  “I have no excuse,” Scranton said. “I was in town at the Saddleback Bar that night, outside. Bruto and I were talking and he offered to sell me the weed. I paid him for two joints, and right after that two cops jumped us, one with a drug dog, and they ticketed us for the joints. Bruto had two more. Then the drug dog sniffed over my car and Bruto’s pickup, but they didn’t find anything.”

  “How do you know Bruto?” I was curious.

  “I don’t remember when I first met him. He and I have been around town a long time. I don’t want this on my record. I shouldn’t have been seen with Bruto. He’s got a bad reputation I hear.”

  The judge rolled back in his chair. “Paul, I don’t see any reason why I should grant deferred in your case. No mitigating circumstances, no excuses. Perhaps getting this misdemeanor on record will motivate you to stop doing drugs. I hear you’re a pretty good artist. Let that be your calling. Not a druggie like others around here. I’m finding you guilty and fining you the same two hundred I fined Bruto. You can pay the court clerk.” He slammed his gavel down. “ Next case. ”

  That day in court I had little to do. Not a one pled not guilty. None of the druggies or speeders complained about the police who had ticketed them. Still, court took almost four hours out of my day. Interesting verification that Scranton and Rivera hung out together. A new thought occurred as I watched with boredom. If Betty had decided to cut Paul off, perhaps Paul enlisted Bruto to take care of her. Who knows?

  As court adjourned, I had another one of my epiphanies. I walked over to city hall and retrieved a small plastic sandwich bag from the kitchen. Then I returned to the Byars building with a needle-nose pliers and retrieved Bruto’s cigarillo, placing it carefully in the sandwich bag borrowed from the city hall office. If DNA evidence ever turned up at Betty’s murder scene, having Bruto’s sample might come in handy.

  11

  Bob had Larry check out Austin Security to close that loop. Instead of a phone call interview, Larry volunteered to meet with the manager of Austin Security and Harold at four thirty that Friday, at the end of the work day at their office. Larry recorded the interview, first with Greg Wall, the manager, and then with Harold Metzger, the guy who’d been at Betty’s several days before the murder.

  “You can understand that we have to do a deep dive on any potential service employee,” Wall said. ”Each one of them goes into homes or businesses owned by people by definition worried about security. We did that with Harold. His record’s clean as a whistle. Army Special Forces verteran. He’s a bit of an introvert by nature, and his demeanor’s been a little problem. He looks like someone who’d be breaking into their house, but the truth is he’s a teddy bear. No trouble from him and no complaints so far. He’s worked for us for close to two years. Wanna talk to him?”

  “Sure,” Larry said. Wall called him in.

  Harold introduced himself, and Larry asked him several softball questions. His story describing his visit to Betty’s house matched the story the girls had told us. The visit was nothing more than a quarterly check to make sure that the surveillance cameras were working as well as the alarm systems.

  “Did you notice anything unusual in the closet or safe room?” Larry asked.

  “I go to a lot of homes, but this one took the cake. The safe room was pretty bare, but the closet was something else. All those shoes and clothes. To top it off, in the far corner of the safe room, a bunch of gold bars and coins had been stacked there neatly.”

  “What and how much was there?”

  “I didn’t take time to look very closely, but there had to be five or six bars and more than a dozen gold coins.”

  “Did you pick any of them up?”

  He looked surprised by the question. “No. That would have been way out of order.”

  “Notice anything else out of order in the house?”

  “No, nothing. Very routine. All systems working.”

  “I appreciate your letting me talk to you and your boss. We’re looking for clues that might lead us to the murderer of your customer. I presume you know all about it.”

  “Just what I’ve read in the paper. I’m no criminologist, but I’d say it was an inside job. They say eighty-five per cent of the murders in this country are committed by people who knew the victim.”

  “We’ve gotta find out who that is. Thanks for your time.” We all shook hands and Metzger left. Another dead end.

  •••

  When Larry got home that evening, he related his visit with Harold to me, and it stimulated a thought. “Based on what Harold said, a lot of gold was lying on the floor when he was there Whoever killed Betty must have taken the gold, but left that one coin there as a poke in the eye. Wonder what happened to that coin.”

  “Should be still there. We told the girls to leave everything as it is.”

  I called Bob and related our conversation, then mentioned my getting Bruto’s cigarillo butt at municipal court. “It’s a long shot, but if we can get DNA from the coin, that could lead toward finding out who killed her.”

  “I’ll send John Griffin, one of my deputies, out there first thing in the morning with an evidence bag and instructions on how to pick the coin up without
damaging what’s on it. Can’t hurt to try anyway. We’ve got plenty of suspects, but no smoking gun, as they say.”

  The weekend passed quietly. This time Larry decided to go to Austin to check out the Blanton Art Museum and the Bullock Texas State History Museum, spending Saturday night in Austin. Carla and I got quality time together. Her morning sickness had by now given way to a voracious appetite. She tried mightily to eat healthy but occasionally feasted on salty, fatty chips and salsa. I had a hard time avoiding mimicking her eating habits.

  •••

  That Monday Carroll Johnson called. “Just checking in. Any news? Did Paul get his advance?”

  While I didn’t think that Carroll had been involved in the murder, I hesitated to tell him about the drug connections both in Houston and Blanco, especially the information Larry had gleaned from HPD concerning Johnson himself. “No, nothing hard at this point. The sheriff’s department still can’t figure out how the murderer got in and who he was. As to Paul, I haven’t heard a word from him. I put five thousand from the estate account into his account at the Blanco National Bank and emailed him the deposit slip. Told him you wanted to make sure he had money to live on.”

  “Good. Thanks. I still think that Blaise guy did it, ” his tone a bit irritated.

  “He’s sure still a prime candidate. I gave him a check for five grand too. He was overwhelmed. I made sure he knew it was your decision, not mine.”

  “I’ll be back in Blanco in a couple of weeks. Nothing pressing right now at the ranch.”