Murder At The Podium Read online

  “Okay Dr. Quint, I’ll back off. Let's go,” Castillo said and directed her back toward the hotel and his car. Ten minutes later they were pulling into the parking lot of the Call Box lounge. Inside there was a mixture of plain clothes and casual clothed cops. No uniforms. Jill guessed they changed out of their uniforms before leaving their stations. It probably wasn’t acceptable or necessarily safe to wander around in a cop uniform. Castillo joined a table with two open chairs and quickly introduced her to everyone. There were some other members of the homicide squad as well as vice at the table. Jill soon had a Blue Moon beer in front of her. There were two other women at the table giving her a look she couldn't read. As soon as everyone was settled with drinks in hand, Castillo informed the group of what Jill had been hired for and her altercation with the three suspects that afternoon.

  “Jill, describe for them what happened to you on the street.”

  At first she could see concern in the eyes of the officers at the table. So she decided she would do her best to give them a laugh. When she got to the part about the bug spray and pulled the actual can out of her purse, they all had a laugh at the weapon. Of course, that laughter was tinged with the knowledge that Jill’s outcome could have been far worse. The can was passed around and a few jokes were shared about adding it to the tool belt of beat officers. A few minutes later Castillo received a call from the convention center security and after a brief discussion in regards to cameras and the location of Jill’s assault, Castillo’s caller indicated he could have the information ready for them to view in ten minutes.

  They stood and exited the bar heading for Castillo’s car. A few minutes later they were back at the convention center heading for the administration offices where security was located. Castillo knocked on the door frame of a room filled with video monitors and made quick introductions of him and Jill.

  “Can you show us the camera aimed at the parking lot in question?” Castillo asked.

  The security person pointed to a monitor on the top left and Jill and Castillo stared at it to verify in their own minds that it had the location of Jill’s assailants under surveillance. They nodded that it was the correct view.

  “How long do you record for before you re-record over the footage?” Jill asked.

  “One week,” replied the security supervisor. “We found that people at conventions, both attendees and exhibitors, will say something happened after the fact - usually at two days after their convention ended. To protect ourselves we found it best to hold on to footage for a week before taping over it.”

  “Excellent. I want to review Jill’s encounter at 3:42pm today and we’ll want to back up and view the tape to determine when the car arrived in the lot,” requested Castillo.

  “I would like to view earlier days to see if the car was there,” Jill added.

  Castillo and Jill locked eyes transmitting the idea that answers to the timing of the three assailants would tell them a lot about who they were.

  The guy running the video playback soon had the episode of Jill confronting the three men. She could see Castillo’s shoulders shake with silent laughter as he watched Jill spray them with bug spray and then get walked back to their car while blinded. The operator made a copy of the event for Jill and Castillo. Then they moved on to checking each hour of the playback tape to determine when the three drove into the parking lot.

  The answer was scary but enlightening. They arrived in the parking lot about five minutes before Jill passed by the lot. Either they had enormous luck or someone alerted the three to Jill leaving police headquarters. The previous day’s tape showed no presence of the men.

  Satisfied that they had a copy of all that was relevant, they left the security office. Jill wanted to head back to her hotel room and make that delayed call to Nathan and see how her facial recognition computer search was going. Castillo escorted her to the hotel lobby and told her he would see her the next day. She was also going to try and identify her three suspects as she was sure Castillo planned to do. There was also the problem of who knew she would walk by the convention center at 3:42 that day. She had three sources in her head. The shuttle driver could have relayed the information when Jill cancelled her afternoon pick-up. The police building may have been under surveillance. Someone in the police headquarters notified the thugs when he or she saw Jill pack up to leave.

  Once she arrived in her hotel room, she typed a quick email to Castillo asking if his building had security cameras that might answer the question of whether she had been under surveillance. She grabbed a coke from the room refrigerator and sprawled on the hotel couch to call Nathan. California’s time zone was two hours earlier than Dallas, so he should be finished with clients for the day. She punched her speed dial button for Nathan on her cell phone and waited for the phone to ring.

  “Hey babe, how’s it going?”

  “Good at the moment. Earlier today I had to fight off three men with the can of bug killer you convinced me to buy and carry in my purse,” Jill said, thinking it was best to lead with a confession.

  There was silence for a moment and then Nathan asked, “Were you harmed?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “Okay, tell me about it.”

  Jill thought before beginning with her explanation that this conversation was going to go okay with Nathan.

  “I was on the far side of the convention center walking towards the hotel.”

  “Why were you walking? I thought a shuttle was provided for you.”

  Okay maybe this conversation wasn’t going to go well.

  “I had proof this morning that Stacy was not genetically or otherwise related to the Sinaloa Cartel, so I figured it was safe to walk the less than a mile to the hotel.”

  “Okay, so you walked and were attacked by three men. Explain.”

  Jill gave him a concise description and then waited for his reaction.

  “Sounds like you handled the situation in the best possible way. Did you think about using any Tai Chi moves?”

  “Yep, but then I heard you and my instructor yell inside my head to not do that.”

  “Three against one; yes that was the right decision.”

  “I have our encounter on tape if you would like to see it.”

  “Email it to me now,” Nathan requested.

  Jill was soon hitting the send key and then she heard silence on his end. Jill thought he was watching the film clip. So she just waited him out.

  “Wow your bug spray was better than a gun. I love how the two blind men were escorted back to their car and I especially like the clear pain they were in with your bug spray in their eyes. The third man believed you were more dangerous with the bug spray than he was. I’m disappointed that the two cars that drove by didn’t stop and come to your aid.”

  “Go ahead and laugh at the video, Castillo and his cop friends have already done that. Yes I know it’s not funny that I was attacked, but it is funny that this big ugly can of bug spray was as good a defensive weapon as .357 magnum.”

  Jill finally heard laughter on the other end of the phone as Nathan said between laughs that, “It was a good thing you’re quick on the draw with the can.”

  Jill laughed in response to his comment and said, “Sounds like a skit from the Roadrunner cartoon with me being the Roadrunner and the three bad guys being Wile E. Coyote. Only in this episode the Roadrunner bought a can of bug spray from Acme Company that actually worked.”

  “You’re going to take the shuttle tomorrow,” Nathan demanded.

  “Yes, although I have to tell you that the driver is one of my three suspects as to who knew I was walking today and at that time.”

  “One of three? Who are the other two? How do you know that someone knew you were walking by at that time?”

  “We watched the video surveillance of the parking lot and the three suspects pulled in five minutes before I arrived and they weren’t in that parking lot at any other time. So the other two suspects are someone doing surveillanc
e on the outside of police headquarters, or someone inside the cop shop who alerted the three men to my walk. My guess is the driver, but Castillo is checking out the other two avenues.”

  “Can Castillo assign a police officer escort between their building and the hotel?”

  “I haven’t asked and I think he could, but I would rather stay with the shuttle. I’ve had a different driver at different times so it might be any of them or someone in the hotel’s dispatch area. Regardless, it’s a short drive and if the driver tried to take me anywhere but the hotel or the police station, out comes my can of bug repellant.”

  “You’re armed and dangerous,” replied Nathan with a grin in his voice. “Seriously, though I’m glad the weapon is working, I don’t want you to get overconfident. Keep it in your hand and ready if someone knocks on your hotel room door. Keep it in your hand when riding on the shuttle bus, and check the nozzle twice a day to make sure it’s working. What are your next steps?”

  “I’m running the fake room service dude, the fake maintenance dude, and the three assailants from this afternoon through Henrik’s facial recognition software. Each of these pictures is sufficiently bad that I may get hundreds of matches which I’ll then have to figure out a way to eliminate. So it’s going to be a lot of boring tedious work spent sitting on the sofa. I’ll also make a usual trip to the fitness center here and pick up dinner at the hotel restaurant.”

  “Is that safe? Are there other people in the fitness area? Could someone poison your food in the restaurant?”

  So Nathan wasn’t completely relaxed about her situation.

  “There have always been at least ten other hotel guests in the fitness area with me. I haven’t ordered room service for fear of arsenic; instead I’ve been picking up meals from the hotel restaurant and so far the chef hasn’t poisoned me. There’re three restaurants here so I’ll dine tonight at a different one than I have dined at the last two nights.”

  “Sounds like a plan to stay safe and that you’re not taking any unnecessary risks other than today’s walk to the hotel.”

  “Yeah, well I learned my lesson there and won’t be walking again. The cool thing is I learned just how wonderful a can of bug spray is to disable bad people. I can think of a few other criminals I’ve come across in the last few years that I would have liked to spray their eyes. In fact I think I should get a few water guns for my home and lab and load them with bug spray. I like shooting people with something other than lead bullets. I like causing these criminals pain but knowing I won’t damage them long term.”

  “Remind me never to make you mad; it seems like I won’t be able to see for hours afterward,” Nathan replied.

  “Ha, as if I would ever spray you! I can take revenge on you simply by cooking for you. You’ll be able to see, but your stomach won’t be happy.”

  “Hmmm that’s a hard choice, bug spray to the eyes or your cooking.”

  “You know if I was standing next to you that would have resulted in an arm pinch for that poor remark. How’s Trixie and Arthur doing?”

  “I nearly fell over laughing yesterday. They slept next to each other somehow without realizing it until they both woke up and realized what they had done. They sprang apart like star-crossed lovers, Arthur hissed and Trixie barked her outrage. I wish I had a camera running to record it.”

  “I wish I had been there to witness it,” Jill said between laughs.

  “I also ran into Deputy Davis when I was in town and she raved about the presentation you did for the kids. When you get back, I think she would like to schedule regular visits to your lab and property. Of all the places she’s taken those kids for career or life counseling they responded best to your visit.”

  “That’s really cool. I could tell when I was talking that I lost some of them up front, but others were really interested. I think with a little more time and planning we could do a joint presentation. Your artist skills are so different from my science background that we would cover more of the kids skill sets together. Just think, maybe you could convert some graffiti tagger to a wine label designer,” Jill said really warming up to the idea of joint mentorship moments with the kids.

  “I’ll leave that up to Deputy Davis to figure out,” Nathan replied.

  “Hey got to get back to work here, I just heard my laptop ping that the first facial recognition search was complete. Love you.”

  “Love you back babe.”

  Jill gave a few moments to the thought that her conversation went better than expected with Nathan. She had been afraid that he was going to suggest flying out to provide protection for her. That would have aggravated and dismayed her. She looked over at the can of bug spray and said aloud to it, “Thank you bug spray”. It had saved her life today and mellowed Nathan’s anxiety.

  She sighed, stood up and stretched, then settled back into the couch.

  Chapter Seventeen

  She looked at the results of the facial recognition search and to her surprise it offered only about fifty names. She thought she would end up with thousands. Perhaps the estimated height eliminated many more faces than she expected.

  First she quickly scanned the list to see if Adam Johnson was one of her fifty.

  He was not.

  Then she looked at the list to see if there were common names shared by both the maintenance guy and the room service guy.

  No common names.

  Wow, the software had a far more distinguishing eye than she had. She thought there was a 60% chance that they were the same person. So what to do with the nearly fifty names for each fake hotel employee? How to narrow it some more? Maybe if she moved on to additional information about each suspect she would see something to eliminate some of the names, but first she wanted to get another run going on the three men from this afternoon. She would need a better picture of them. She’d refine their pictures to the best of her ability and get that search going, then get a work-out in, followed by grabbing dinner from a different restaurant. Maybe she’d come up with a brilliant idea while running on the treadmill.

  An hour later she was back in her room, a sweaty mess, dinner in hand, and with no brilliant ideas. She took a look at the second search for the identity of the three men and saw that it was still running so she went back to the first search. How to narrow down nearly one hundred names? The database included names and faces and additional information from different data sources across the world. Pictures available from passport agencies were different than those used for driver’s licenses or military organizations.

  Should she narrow it down by country of citizenship? That probably didn’t mean anything. Couldn’t an Aussie or Brit tamper with Stacy’s blueberry muffins as easily as an American? Yes. Other information like height or weight had already been used to narrow the search. Her database didn’t give her employer or a travel log, both of which would have given her a thread to follow. She would put the names aside for now and use them when she had suspects.

  She decided to swing back to figuring out who knew she was walking back to the hotel today. She dropped an email to Castillo to see if he had any information on building surveillance. This should be an easy question to answer as it was his own department and they had 24/7 security. A ping came back shortly notifying her of his response. She opened it and read that they had reviewed the tapes and failed to see any surveillance conducted on the building. They went a step further and viewed the cameras on the lobby of his building and they noted no specific person picking up a phone shortly after Jill had exited the building this afternoon. Of course in this age of technology, someone could have texted someone her departure and the surveillance video on the lobby would fail to show anyone with a phone to their ear.

  So she was back to the shuttle driver or someone else at the hotel that was keeping tabs on her whereabouts. Was this person tracking her movement throughout the hotel? Was it a single person or was more than one hotel employee involved? It was time to reach out to the person from the hotel that had offere
d to put her up for free. She needed answers from the hotel but she didn’t know who to trust. Hopefully the hotel person that had wanted her here could assist her in getting to the bottom of this problem. She asked Castillo for the person’s name then put a call into her with her cellphone. Then she disconnected the call before it was answered. She was starting to get really paranoid, but what if her room had listening devices in it. If someone could deliver a poisoned blueberry muffin, then planting spyware in Jill’s room was mere child’s play. So she exited the room and went outside to the street in front of the hotel. If someone had randomly planted a device on the hotel’s exterior and that was pretty far-fetched, then the road noise would hopefully distort her voice.

  “Hello,” said a female voice.

  “Hello, may I speak with Amelia Clark?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Hello Ms. Clark, this is Dr. Jill Quint, the police consultant on the murder investigation of Stacy Johnson. Detective Castillo provided me with your name and number.”