Murder At The Podium Read online

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jill reviewed the notes of the original research that they had collected on the Johnsons. She hadn't realized at that time that they had never done a deep dive into Adam Johnson. Their initial research focused on Stacy Johnson and her role in the marriage. Jill began to build her profile of Adam. She soon had his birth date, birthplace, parents, siblings, education, and work history. She moved on to research any legal proceedings. She had his marriage license, driver's license, speeding tickets, car, and property ownership. She saw that he had both a driver’s license for automobiles as well as a Class C Commercial Driver’s License. Jill looked into the different vehicle classes and determined that Adam could drive what sounded like a hazardous material semi-trailer truck. He had gotten the license about five years ago and had recently renewed it. It sounded like he was driving those kinds of vehicles on a regular basis. He was an engineer working for an oil company so why would he be driving a semi-trailer filled with oil? That didn't make sense to Jill. She wondered if the surveillance on Adam could determine when, where, and why he was driving such a vehicle. She dropped a note to Castillo to alert his team handling the surveillance in Odessa.

  Next she went to work on their finances. She’d asked Jo if she had time to look into either Adam Johnson’s finances or that of the oil company he worked for in Odessa, as she was so much better at understanding what she was seeing and spotting problems. One other thing she had noted on her legal search was the Johnsons had no bank ownership of any of their property. They had paid cash or paid off all large purchases. For a family of five, even with two incomes, that was fabulous money management. An hour later she was exactly nowhere with nothing appearing to her to be a problem.

  Jill leaned back in her chair and stared out the door of the space they had assigned her. Where should she go next? Think Jill, you’re a detective. What other information do you have access to? Why is Adam driving semi-trailer trucks? Are they a frugal family, or do they have cash from another source? Who is the fake maintenance and room service guy at the hotel? She thought about chasing down the source of the arsenic, but it was too widely available for that to be useful. Maybe she would circle back to the pictures she had of her fake hotel employees and run them through her own facial recognition software. Henrik Klein, a client that hired them to solve his wife’s murder and with whom they had become friends after the case, had provided her top of the line software. He operated an international technology and security firm and several U.S. law enforcement agencies had purchased his software. Jill was likely his only free client. For all she knew, the software used in the Dallas crime lab for facial recognition was Henrik’s.

  She went back to look for the best frontal picture she had of the two men. There was no perfect mugshot as they’d done an excellent job tilting their heads away from the camera. It would be interesting to see if the software thought the two men were the same. She selected her two best pictures of the maintenance guy and room service guy and entered them into the program. The database contained nearly a billion of the seven billion humans on planet earth. What was poorly documented were children under the age of fourteen which was about 1.8 billion and peoples of the remote and rural areas of the world. In past searches, she’d had a suspect identification in less than five minutes, while other searches had taken as long as an hour and that was with good clear headshots. She made an internal bet with herself that she would end up with a thousand matches over a two hour time period. With her laptop tied up, she went back to contemplating the door frame. Castillo wanted some connection to Adam and so far other than lying to Jill, she hadn’t found anything to connect him to his wife’s murder.

  She wondered if there was any money involved - perhaps a life insurance policy given that she was married with kids. Jill would call her employer to get names of friends who knew Stacy on the job so she could chat with them regarding Stacy’s frame of mind. She’d also go back to that wedding announcement and call the bridesmaids to see what they knew about Stacy. That should take care of friends and family and give her just about all she was going to find on Stacy. She was also waiting for Marie and Jo to get back to her with any social media or financial information that they were both searching for. She checked on the progress of the facial recognition search and noted that it was only ten percent done after an hour. It was time to pack it in and return to her hotel and get the run going again. Otherwise at this rate she would be stuck in police headquarters till eight or nine at night.

  Since she had proof that Stacy was unrelated to the cartel, she figured it was now safe to walk back and forth to the hotel during daylight hours. The distance was less than a mile. There were a few desolate areas as she left police headquarters and crossed a construction area, then the freeway overpass, followed by the walk-way along the convention center before emerging to her hotel. What could happen in a fifteen minute walk down a four lane road? She felt supremely confident that she could handle anything that presented itself. She hadn’t been bothered as she walked by the deserted construction area or over the bridge covering the freeway below. She was nearly home free with just the covered walk-way of the convention center. She could see the edge of the hotel in the distance. The sidewalk edged along one of many convention center parking lots.

  Jill got a movement out of the corner of her eye as three men exited a car that was parked two rows in from the sidewalk. Rather than walking towards the convention center they were on a path towards her. Jill had multiple thoughts flow through her head.

  Should she run?

  Could she outrun them?

  They didn’t look like runners but one never knew.

  Whatever she did, she better not allow one of them to get behind her.

  Should she use her laptop bag or purse as a weapon? No, at the most she couldn’t take more than one of them out at a time.

  A quick glance around showed the odd car moving on Lamar street; should she race out into traffic and get herself killed by a car instead?

  Would any cars seeing her struggle, come to her aid?

  Maybe she should dial 9-1-1 on her cell, but could she afford the time to look for her cell in her purse and take her eyes off the men to actually hit the three buttons?

  She had her orange belt in Tai Chi and was nearly there to qualify for her green belt, but again could she take on three men at once? Further back in her mind she could hear both Nathan and her instructor screaming ‘no’.

  Crap, they’re getting closer…. what to do, what to do?

  Then she remembered, Nathan had been paranoid about this case and insisted that as soon as she arrived she head to a store to buy bug spray. Since it was Texas and everyone owned a gun in this state, she thought it was overkill as the person with a gun was likely faster on the draw than her and her bug spray, but she followed his request and had even texted him a picture of the bottle that took up so much of the space in her purse.

  She pulled the can out and when they were within ten feet of her she arched the spray at the eyes of the three men. She immediately took two of them down as they struggled with the bug spray in their eyes, the third man was still staring at her calculating whether to risk coming at her or retreat with his buddies to the car.

  Speaking in Spanish to his friends he urged one of the blinded men through the parking lot toward the car. Jill now knew she could outrun the men and took off towards her hotel, bug spray in one hand while the other searched for her cell phone. She looked over her shoulder to see if she was being pursued; but the three men had disappeared from view. They could still come after her on foot, but she knew they were slowed by the speed that each man could walk, blinded, to the car.

  Breathless from the encounter and her long block sprint she reached the hotel where a doorman was standing outside. He looked alarmed at her wild look, can of bug spray, and something else in another hand.

  He cautiously approached, but didn’t get too close and said, “May I help you ma’am?”

  She
stopped, feeling the doorman might at least come to her aid if the three men returned by car; put the bug spray down, and dialed Castillo. She no longer felt the need for a police rescue, so rather than make a bigger public spectacle of herself than she already had, she dialed the detective.

  “Castillo.”

  “Hi, it’s Jill and I just fought off three men who were trying to attack me.”

  “Are you in a safe spot now?”

  “Yes, I’m in front of the hotel and there is a doorman standing here.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Her phone call disconnected and she stood looking at the bellman.

  “Hi, a detective will be here shortly, and I’m a guest of this hotel.”

  “May I see your room key?” the doorman asked still not getting close.

  Jill reached into the outside pocket of her purse and promptly located the card key with the hotel’s name on it.

  She saw the doorman relax and approach.

  “Are you having a problem with bugs in your hotel room? I’ll call housekeeping and they’ll handle that for you.”

  “Oh sorry. I guess it looks bad carrying a can of bug spray into this hotel. I bought it for self-protection because it will hurt your eyes and it has a reach of twenty feet and I just used it on three men who tried to attack me on the other side of the convention center.”

  “Oh ok ma’am.”

  Jill had a moment of amusement as the doorman obviously thought she was strange and maybe hallucinating, but she was a customer of the hotel so he was trying to roll with the punches.

  Fortunately, she saw Detective Castillo pull up to the entrance in an unmarked police car. While police headquarters was close he must have been walking out to his car to have gotten to the hotel that fast. She noted that the doorman was pleased to have some back-up to deal with a possible crazy woman.

  Castillo approached and said, “What happened?”

  Jill gave a description of her encounter and showed the detective the can of bug spray. He couldn’t help himself and he burst out laughing.

  “Bug spray, Dr. Quint?” Jill noted that Castillo added doctor to her title whenever he had emotion to bring into the conversation.

  “I made a promise to my boyfriend that I would carry it around for protection. He believes, like you, that I attract the criminal element on these cases. I don’t own or know how to shoot a gun, so bug spray is the next best thing. It has a longer range than pepper spray, I can buy it anywhere and it allowed me to take out two of the three men the first time I fired the nozzle.”

  “After, I’m done taking the report here and we get an APB out on the suspects and their vehicle, I would like to take you to my favorite cop bar so that my fellow brothers and sisters can hear your story. We all need a good laugh; and perhaps their friends and families might benefit from your approach.”

  “So you all are going to laugh at my expense?” Jill asked amused and outraged at the same time. She was starting to feel stupid.

  “No, not at you, we’ll be laughing at the stupid criminals. Now give me a description of the car and each suspect.”

  Jill wasn’t carrying her cell phone in her hand when the men approached and thus had not thought to take a picture of the men or their car. She was disappointed with herself for having missed that opportunity. She closed her eyes and pictured the men and their car in her head and then gave Castillo as good a description as she could.

  “Did they speak to you or between themselves?” asked the detective.

  “They never said anything to me even when they were within ten feet of me. However, after I blinded them they yelled curses, I assume in Spanish as they weren’t words I recognized. The guy who could still see led them back to the car speaking to them in Spanish as they stumbled through the parking lot.”

  “What’d you think they were planning to do with you? Did they have any weapons that you could see? Were they planning on kidnapping you off the street?”

  Jill had to think through the scene. It was a good question from the detective. What were the men planning on doing? It was either beat her up or kidnap her as she couldn’t recall seeing any weapons in their hands or outlined in their clothing. If they were going to kidnap her, was it to take her elsewhere to kill her or did someone want to talk with her? Either way, it wouldn’t have been a favorable outcome for her.

  “There were no visible weapons, and although the street wasn’t busy, I still think three men would have had a hard time beating up a woman without a car stopping and intervening. So I think the plan was to take me somewhere in their car.”

  “That’d be my conclusion as well. My guess is that they were planning to take you elsewhere to kill you; they just didn’t count on you defending yourself.”

  The detective finished calling it in and then invited Jill to join him at a cop bar. She took him up on the offer as she’d defer the call to Nathan notifying him of her near misadventure. On one hand she wanted an open relationship with him, but on the other hand she knew it would cause him anxiety that she could do nothing to relieve.

  “Do you think they’re related to the cartel?”

  “Why would you suggest that?” asked Castillo.

  “Never mind, dumb suggestion,” Jill said with chagrin. “It’s because they spoke Spanish which is probably true for half of the people living in this state.”

  “Bad deduction, Dr. Quint. I speak Spanish and I have no connection to the cartel.”

  “Yep I know, bad deduction.”

  “Then again they could be with the cartel. Some of the cartel guys look like average citizens rather than inner city thugs. They’re generally not tatted up like our thugs. So in just looking at three men on the street, you wouldn’t have an easy way to identify them as cartel members.”

  “Ok I’ll keep that in mind. Not to change the subject, but do you know if the convention center has security cameras aimed at the area I was in?”

  “I was just about to call and find out. Why don’t we walk back there and see if we can see any cameras while I try to locate someone in their security department.”

  “Sounds like a plan; let me just run my laptop upstairs to my room and get it going. I was running a facial recognition search with some software I have from a German company. It was going slow, so I decided to pause it and walk back to the hotel in daylight. I think it’s going to take hours to run and probably give me 1,000 suspects, but I thought I’d try.”

  “Ok.”

  Jill took the elevator up to her room and set her laptop running looking for the mysterious room service and maintenance men. A quick glance in the mirror showed nothing too out of place. She lifted up her arm to smell her armpit and despite the adrenaline rush followed by the short sprint, she smelled okay. She washed her hands thinking she’d have bug spray of her finger tips from the nozzle. She was back downstairs in under five minutes.

  Castillo had moved his car out of the doorman’s way and she joined him to walk back to the place where Jill encountered the three men. She positioned herself and that of the three men as she remembered and there was still a slight stain where the bug spray had landed on the concrete. She pointed out the parking spot the car had been in. The two of them looked around for security cameras, but the convention center was big and normally a place like this wanted to protect its attendees and had cameras on the rooftop aimed at all exterior places. They would have to wait for the convention center security service to call the detective back.

  “So this was the first day you walked back to the hotel?” Castillo asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Rather odd that they were waiting for you as normally you wouldn’t come this way; you would have arrived back at the hotel on a shuttle bus.”

  “Maybe they weren’t specifically waiting for me. Perhaps I was the first random woman that walked by.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I don’t know,” Jill replied then grudgingly added, “Every person in a prior cas
e that has tried to make my acquaintance in such a manner has been involved in the case.”

  “See this is why I hired you. You’re like a flower to a bumble bee. The bad guys just can’t resist you and stay away. I have a couple of cold cases I’d like your help with when you’re finished with Stacy Johnson’s case.”

  “Very funny detective.”

  “My lieutenant gave me a lot of grief for wanting to use you as a consultant, but she’ll probably now be willing to sign off on the cold case idea.”

  “You know detective I can’t figure out if you’re joking or not. Regardless, I have a business to operate a life to live in California.”

  “Too bad, you could be the department’s latest technique for crime solving.”

  “Ha ha, detective. Let's head to that cop bar of yours so some more of your law enforcement buddies can make me the butt of their jokes.”