by J J Miller
Frierson marched toward the back door.
“And he’s just blown any chance of getting bail,” he called over his shoulder.
It sure looked that way. If the judge was in two minds about Chip Bowman posing a flight risk, he’d now have the arrest report to go by. Chip had zero chance of getting bail.
And if I couldn’t help him beat whatever charges he got slapped with, he was never going to enjoy another meal with his wife and kids again.
Chapter 14
Three days later, I was in a Men’s Central Jail visitation room. Frierson was right about Chip getting bail. Judge Marcus Cordukes, who presided over the hearing, responded to my arguments with a kind of baffled wonder at how an accused could so effectively self-sabotage his shot at bail. He denied it like the snowflake’s chance in hell that it was. And to top it off, I spoke with Deputy District Attorney Dale Winter right after the hearing. He told me that a plea deal would only be offered if Chip was willing to divulge the names of his accomplices. With Chip sticking to his innocence, there was no guilt to admit, no names to divulge, and little else to discuss. Winter couldn’t hide his relish.
“The DA’s got a jones for this case, Madison,” Winter said. “He’s fed up with these cannabis cowboys. Your boy thought he was too clever and got himself caught. Either that or he got double-crossed and is too scared to come clean to you and me both. But that’s giving him the benefit of the doubt to a ludicrous degree, if you ask me.”
“No one’s asking you, Winter,” I said. I had no particular feelings about Dale Winter. He was a good prosecutor who was all about hard work and dedication to the cause. His physical appearance was a mid-forties stereotype—medium height, soft-bellied, balding, and goateed. He had a broad, youngish, and fleshy face that a retreating hairline made look oversized. There was nothing flash about Winter, neither in dress nor manner. He was a no-nonsense doer, a function over form operator, but one that seemed to really love his job.
“We’ll be having ourselves a trial then,” he said with a quick grin. “Bring it on.”
He then strode off, no doubt entertaining the brownie points he’d earn by convicting Chip. He may have been plainer than budget stationary, but that didn’t mean he lacked ambition. And he had reason to feel upbeat. Both of us knew my case, as it stood, was as weak as water.
But every weakness contains within it an element of strength. And I was now on a mission to find it.
I’d been waiting five minutes before the door opened to the sound of shuffling feet. Chip, dressed in LA County blues, had his hands cuffed behind his back. The sheriff’s deputy behind him was six-foot tall and athletically lean. He was only in his mid-twenties but he looked as grim as anyone ever did who’d punched the clock in a prison.
“You got an hour,” the deputy barked, his voice bouncing off the cement floor and grey brick walls.
“The cuffs,” I said as the deputy turned to go. He huffed, spun around and undid the lock of Chip’s hand cuffs with speed. He then looked at his watch.
“Eleven thirty-six.”
“Eleven thirty-six,” I said, checking my watch.
I motioned for Chip to sit as the deputy left. He looked exhausted. No surprises there. Nothing can prepare you for being locked up in prison, and especially one as notoriously volatile as Men’s Central Jail. Except, of course, prior experience. Only days ago, Bowman was at home with his family. Now he was occupying a cell with five other inmates and allowed out for just one hour a day.
“How are you doing, Chip?”
He let out a quick, rueful breath. “Just dandy, Brad. How are you?”
I didn’t answer.
“I know. I know,” he said. “I shouldn’t have run. That was stupid of me. And now I’m stuck in this shithole. Did Carrie work out the payment?”
I nodded. “Yes, she did. Thank you.”
I was not in a position to work for free, so Carrie had leaned on her parents for a four-grand upfront payment, which was half the flat fee I said I’d charge. Given the expenses of Megan, Jack and whatever experts I needed, eight thousand was a fraction of what this case was likely to cost me. Megan chided me for letting my heart get the better of my head. As right as she was, she understood that when it came to helping a fellow Marine, profit was never going to be my motive.
“Are you having any issues with your cell mates?” I asked.
Chip shook his head. “Nope. If anything’s going to kill me in here it will be the boredom.”
I’d warned Chip about everything from K9s, or snitches, who might befriend him to bikers and their associates who might shank him. He was no safer in jail than on the outside, I warned him. And this was a county jail; his cellmates may only be there for a few days before being transferred to state prison. So he was going to have inmates coming and going and any one of them could be a threat. In Quinn Rollins, the Iron Raiders, the veterans who mourned Bo Hendricks and Nate Reed, and any other client who lost money in the robbery, the ordinary-looking man in front of me had managed to make a world of dangerous enemies.
Once I’d reiterated the need for him to keep his mouth shut, I moved on to his case.
“Chip, you need to help me understand a few things.”
He nodded. “Like what?”
“What’s the connection between Quinn Rollins and the Iron Raiders?”
In the material Jack had dug up was a case file on the notorious bikers. Its members were implicated in various criminal activities: murder, kidnapping, arson, prostitution, extortion, weapons trafficking, and motorcycle theft. Their chief source of income, it was claimed, was the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine. They had chapters all across America but their biggest was in Ventura, the site of their founding clubhouse.
“I don’t know for sure,” said Chip, shrugging his shoulders. “I mean, they’ve got legal cannabis farms up in Humboldt but who knows what else they get up to on the sly.”
I tapped one of the documents I’d laid out on the table. “This police report says the bikers that turned up to the crime scene were Iron Raiders. The same gang that threatened me. Why would they be there?”
“Some of the weed we were carrying was theirs.”
“How much?”
“Not much. Ten pounds.”
“The way they’ve been acting, I’d swear they’ve lost a lot more than ten pounds of weed. Did Henry think that Quinn was trafficking illegal drugs for the Raiders?”
“He didn’t have a clue. All he knew was that Quinn was obsessive about expanding HardShell, to the point where Henry felt Quinn did not care which way he made a buck.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s look at what we know. My investigator tells me that the Raiders are suspected of manufacturing the drug ice. He says they own property up in Humboldt County, which gives them a perfect secluded location in which to operate a clandestine lab. Quinn’s company HardShell’s stock business is running cash and weed for Humboldt County’s legal cannabis producers, right?”
Chip nodded his head. “That’s where most are. There are some in other areas now. But like I said, I saw no evidence of illegal activity at HardShell. I don’t know how many runs we made up to Humboldt, but every leaf and every note was legal and accounted for.”
I leaned in over the table.
“You know what else this forensics report says, Chip?”
Chip shook his head and looked like he didn’t want to know the answer.
“It says they found traces of methamphetamine on your hands.”
Chip looked mortified. “What? That must be a mistake. I swear, I’ve never touched meth in my life. I never saw any meth at HardShell. That’s the God’s honest truth.”
“They swabbed you all over Chip, and they found ice on both your hands.”
“Well, someone must have put it there!” Chip said, on the verge of tears. He pressed his lips together grimly. “I don’t know who, Brad, but they’re trying to frame me.”
“Who would want to do that to
you?”
Chip shook his head. “I’ve got no idea.”
“How did you get on with Nate and Bo?”
“Those guys. Well, they were both loose cannons. They could get real wild, especially when they got on the booze, but as far as I knew everything they did at HardShell was above board.”
I tapped another document. “My investigator tells me that these guys were anything but law-abiding citizens. They were in Iraq as private military contractors for the Fortis company. It seems Quinn was their boss there and both of them were sent home when accusations surfaced about unarmed civilians being killed by Fortis personnel.”
“Yes, I heard about that. But only vague details.”
“Okay. Let me ask you something else. Say I’m a grower up in Humboldt. I’ve got a million dollars’ worth of cannabis that I need to get to retailers in Los Angles and I’ve got two-hundred grand in cash that I need to give the Finance Department in LA for tax. How does HardShell give me peace of mind that my assets will get to where they need to go?”
“Well, one thing is our team members. All have combat experience. All know what to do under fire. Then our vehicles. They are state of the art when it comes to armor protection. And then there’s the tracing service we provide.”
“What’s that?”
“All the cash and cannabis are placed in sealed bags which are barcoded and microchipped. Using our app, a client can see where his money and weed is at any given time.”
That struck me as odd. “Really? Isn’t there a danger that the tracking information can get into the wrong hands?”
“There are checks and balances. The destination is not given, neither is the route taken, and the information the client has is not real time. There’s a time delay of fifteen minutes.”
“So that’s how the bikers knew where you were?”
“Yeah, they would have been monitoring the run. Maybe they noticed a delay and came to see what was going on.”
I picked up the police report.
“The cops are building a strong case against you, and we’ve got jack shit. Let’s go through what they have so far. You’ve got no alibi, for starters. They’ve got traces of meth on you, so they’ll be convinced that HardShell was trafficking illegal drugs and that you were in on it. They’ve discovered that a lot of money suddenly appeared in a secret account of yours, and what’s your explanation for that?”
Chip had already told me before the bail hearing, but I wanted to hear his stupid story again.
“I’d made some extra money helping out Scooter and, along with my bonuses, it was all adding up and I didn’t want the IRS—”
“That’s right. My client, who’s charged with committing double murder in a robbery that saw a million dollars disappear, is a tax cheat.”
I folded my arms and looked at Chip. “Let me ask you something. Given everything we now know, who would you say was behind this?”
“Brad, I just don’t know.”
“Well, if you didn’t do it, it still looks like an inside job.”
I was watching Chip as I said this. I saw his eyes light up.
“Maybe it’s not quite an inside job.” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Bravo.”
“You mean Bravo Security? Owned and run by David McClean—Rollins’ rival?”
“Yeah. But’s it more than a rivalry. Those two are like mortal enemies.”
Chapter 15
You won’t find HardShell Security’s street address listed anywhere online. The only contact options offered by the company website is an email.
I’d called Rollins to tell him I wanted to speak with his money man, Scooter Slovak. Rollins said no problem and gave me the address. He wouldn’t be on site when I visited because he had some work to do on a property up in Santa Barbara.
The HardShell compound, a single-level, cinder-block building painted olive green, was unmarked aside from its street number. I parked next to a large roller door. I walked round the corner to find a large window with thick glass and blinds that blocked the view inside. My bet was that if an RPG ever hit any part of this building, it would bounce off it like a stray bug.
I came to an unmarked door with an intercom. When I pressed the button, a voice came crackling through the speaker a split-second later.
“State your purpose, please.”
“I’m Brad Madison. I’ve got a meeting with Scooter Slovak.”
“Present your ID to the camera, please, sir.”
I hadn’t noticed at first but lodged in the corner of the alcove was a camera encased in a dome of glass.
“Driver’s license?”
“Driver’s license works just fine, sir,”
I pulled the card out of my wallet and held it up to the camera. The lens inside the glass dome shifted forward as the operator zoomed in on my ID.
“Come through, sir.”
A loud click indicated the door was unlocked. I turned the metal handle downward and pushed. Instantly, I sensed the immense weight of the door and I had to put my shoulder against it to get through. As I passed, I saw the door was half a foot thick.
As the door retracted slowly behind me, a guard holding an M4 assault rifle greeted me in the entrance hall. He was mid-fifties, medium height and thick set. His tactical vest was fully loaded with everything from ammo to a secondary weapon, a pistol.
“Step this way, please, sir,” the guard said, motioning for me to pass through the metal detector beside him, all the while keeping his index finger laid across his trigger guard. Any threat from me and he could sweep his gun onto me and empty half his clip before I got a foot closer.
Once through the scanner, the guard asked me to follow. We turned a corner and continued down a hallway. At the second door on the right, he stopped and held it open for me.
“In here, sir.”
I did as he asked and walked into a dimly lit office. A man in his early thirties sprang up from behind a bank of computer screens and came toward me. He was about six-feet tall, a few of inches shorter than me, his face was freckled and tanned, and the blonde hair that sprang out from his weathered black cap looked bleached by the sun or surf. The guy had an outdoorsy vitality about him that belied the sedentary, dark confines of his office.
“Mr. Madison,” he said, offering his hand. “Scott Slovak. But everyone calls me Scooter.” He then looked at my escort. “Thanks Cliff. I’ll take it from here.”
With that, Cliff moved behind Slovak, placed his weapon in a gun rack, and sat himself down at a desk beneath a bank of security camera screens.
“Please, have a seat,” said Slovak.
“Thank you for seeing me.”
“No problem. Quinn said you were defending Chip and that I should tell you whatever you want to know.”
“Chip tells me you got him a job here.”
“That’s right. I was here from the get-go, and I when we needed more staff, I sounded him out. And he wasn’t happy where he was so we wasted no time getting him on board.”
“Where was he working?” Chip had not mentioned this to me.
“Security for a high-end jeweler. Standing around making sure some little old lady doesn’t make off with a diamond-encrusted broach.”
“I understand why he’d switch.”
“Who can resist a job with a bit if kinetics? You know what I mean. Quinn told me you served.”
“Seems like a long time ago now.”
“Well, as I’m sure you can appreciate, vets like jobs that add a little risk to the daily grind. A little spice. We were expanding and needed to up capacity in both men and vehicles. Quinn’s thing was that HardShell was always going to be staffed fully by seasoned vets. He didn’t want anyone who hadn’t been shot at and shot back. So, I recommended Chip.”
“You served together?”
“Not quite. We both did a stint with Fortis in Afghanistan, doing poppy eradication.”
“Right. And you recommended him becau
se he was your friend?”
“Not just that. I owed him.”
“How so?”
“Chip saved my life. We were overseeing an eradication effort in Nad-e Ali when we came under fire. We had to retreat and my ATV got stuck in a river. Chip ran back for me and maintained suppression fire while two Afghan police and I wrestled to free my vehicle. Chip’s a crack shot and within half a minute their guns fell silent and we all got out alive. Thanks to him.”
Slovak took a moment to dwell on the memory.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked.
“Quinn said to tell you whatever you need to know. Shoot.”
“Do you think Chip killed your colleagues and stole that money?”
Slovak took a breath and adjusted the brim of his cap. “It’s not what I want to believe.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I know. Let me put it this way: I don’t know. But what I do know is that a big pile of money is enough to turn anyone’s head.”
“Was he unhappy with what he was getting paid?”
“I couldn’t say. But he was taking home twice as much than he was at that jewelry job. And with bonuses he was doing pretty well for himself. Still, he’s got a family and always seemed to be saying you can never have enough money. He wanted to set his girls up for life. Nothing unusual about that.”
There was something Slovak wasn’t saying.
“But?”
“What can I say? Like I said, these guys are driving around with lottery money under their feet. Who knows what goes through their heads?”
“Sounds like to me you think he did it.”
Slovak shrugged. “All I’m saying is we’re all human.”
“If Chip did do it, he didn’t do it alone.”
“True.”
“How do you and Rollins know each other?”
“Fortis, again. After that incident with Chip, I went to Iraq to join Quinn’s team in training, arming and housing the local police. That’s where I met Nate and Bo too.”
“I see. And now you’re the finance brains of HardShell, I take it. Can you tell me about how the system works?”