Murder At The Podium Read online

  Jill completed everything in her plan and slid into her surveillance spot with just a few minutes to spare. She hoped that Adam hadn’t changed his schedule and left early. Guerrero was again going to join her in surveillance as they had received the Odessa Crime Lab results on the substance in the test tube that she had collected. It was indeed methylamine in a solution of methanol, ethanol, water, and tetrahydrofuran. This was a major chemical precursor to methamphetamine and there was no legitimate reason for that chemical to be stored next to a dead oil rig. After they followed Adam’s second tanker-truck drive, Jill and Guerrero would be meeting with the Narcotics unit.

  Around his usual time, Adam pulled out in one of the four trucks. Guerrero provided her with a list of all the oil wells and Adam’s employer had around one hundred. If they were unable to track Adam, they simply had too many oil wells to guess where else the truck might be. Guerrero was joining her tail shortly and then she could fall back for a while. Adam made it easy for them this time, picking an oil rig that was close to a residential tract. It was easy to track him this time and the oil well he visited was in motion pumping.

  After spending five minutes of reading the gauges and writing down measurements, Adam got back in the truck and was on the move. She studied how the truck moved on the road and thought the tanker full. So either Adam was going to do something different, or he would visit another oil well or warehouse to dump his load. Jill and Guerrero were in communication trying to anticipate where the tanker truck was going. They had their list of BDC company property locations which was much smaller when compared to the number of oil wells owned by Adam’s employer. It soon became clear he was heading for one of those properties and Jill, following at a safe distance, caught a glimpse of the truck entering a warehouse.

  They had enough information to hint at a large drug manufacturing operation. It was time to return to police headquarters and bring more people in to discuss next steps. They had arranged for Castillo to join them by phone and they sat down with a number of fellow officers from Guerrero's department as well as Chief Swanson. He'd asked Jill to begin the conversation with Castillo filling in where necessary concerning the murder of Adam's wife. Jill included the research done by Jo about Adam's employer, and the pattern of truck and chemical movements occurring in the city.

  “We need some more resources to understand this complete case,” Guerrero said. “It appears we have cartel activity in our city and if I’m honest it's probably more than one of the cartels operating here. The required chemicals to make methamphetamines are being distributed and stored through the BDC Company and some oil wells. I think our next steps are to get inside and search all of the buildings of the BDC Company as well as any non-pumping oil rigs owned by Adam’s employer.”

  “What's the name of the company that Adam Johnson works for?” asked another cop.

  “Vernon Oil Company,” replied Jill.

  “What do we know about the company besides its strange financials?”

  “They've been around for about fifteen years and they own perhaps a hundred oil wells in this state,” Jill said. “They operate their own transportation and deliver their tankers of crude oil to a processor in town. They employ about thirty people who are either sourcing, drilling, or maintaining their present oil wells or they drive the trucks that move the crude oil from the wells to the processing point. Vernon Oil was started by two men and it’s privately owned. Adam Johnson was hired to work there out of college; he's one of their longest serving employees. By training, he's a petrochemical engineer and he’s had a semi-truck driver’s license for several years.”

  “So what do you think is really going on here?” asked someone in the room, of Detective Guerrero.

  “We have a petrochemical engineer who is making regular, perhaps even scheduled, deliveries of the chemicals used to make methamphetamines. We have at least one nonoperational oil well owned by Vernon Oil that is storing one of those chemicals. We have several properties owned by the BDC Company which according to Jill's expert eventually traces back to the family operating the Precursor Chemical Cartel in Mexico. In the middle of all this, is the death of Stacy Johnson which was quite sophisticated and generally not associated with a hit from a cartel. Furthermore, an attempt was made on Jill's life in Dallas and we don't know who those men were or why they have not followed her here to Odessa and really what their role was in the case.”

  Castillo asked, “Detective, what do you think are the next steps? I really need to question Adam Johnson in regards to his wife's murder. I've been sitting back waiting to see what information could be collected on him. Stacy's poisoning by blueberry muffin seems to be the sort of murder a petrochemical engineer might try. I’m sensitive though to the size of the drug distribution center that you may be close to uncovering there in Odessa.”

  “It would be helpful if you could hold off a day or so, on interviewing Adam Johnson. I'm no narcotics expert, but for the safety of my fellow officers, I think we may need to bring in the bigger guns of the DEA.”

  “The agency has an office in El Paso and I would guess that methamphetamine chemicals are crossing the border between Juarez and El Paso. I'm going to step out of the conference room and see if I can get them to come to Odessa,” and the narcotics detective left the room.

  “While he's lining up help with the DEA, I think we can do a little more detecting on our own here,” Guerrero suggested. “Normally we would want to pursue a search warrant to sample the non-pumping oil wells of Vernon Oil and investigate the buildings of the BDC Company. I'm afraid if we tip our hand we could lose the opportunity to shut down this operation and the people involved. I also don't think we even know the scope of the operation without a little more investigation.”

  There was silence in the room as they thought about the scope of the narcotics operation and the risks both from a legal and physical safety perspective to some undercover work. The narcotics detective stepped back in.

  “The DEA is highly interested in joining our operation and they’re taking one of their border surveillance planes to get here within two hours. They’re aware of this cartel and would love to be involved in an operation that puts a dent into their transportation network.”

  “Looks like it’s going to be a long night for all of us, let’s all take five to let our families know we may not be home for dinner,” said the Chief and the room quickly emptied leaving Jill and Castillo on the phone.

  “Detective, are you going to join the party here?” Jill asked.

  “Sent an email to my lieutenant to see if I can make the 6pm flight to Midland.”

  “Let me know if you’re coming and I’ll fetch you at the airport.”

  “I think you can probably plan on it. I’d be surprised if the lieutenant denies it as it’s good for the department on several levels.”

  “Okay, I’ll keep you posted on what’s happening here and see you at the airport later.”

  She disconnected the call and sat there for the moment. She knew she was going to be barred from joining them on the actual operation which was fine by her. She didn’t need to be shot at to feel like a valued member of their team. She could contribute by doing computer searches on stuff like how were the chemicals arriving in Odessa. She had plenty of views of Adam leaving Vernon Oil but none of the tanker-trucks driving into the Vernon yard. Maybe she could go back to the footage she had requested of Guerrero that first day and see if she could spot the trucks driving into town.

  Ten minutes later, after using the license plates as a marker, she found numerous views of the same four trucks traveling up the interstate. They all came from the same direction at nearly the same time. She guessed that the cartel was good at the logistics of transportation. She then checked the license plates on a few of the trucks that Adam didn’t drive and found that they individually came from a variety of directions towards the Vernon Oil yard. She contacted Guerrero and asked if he could obtain the footage of trucks crossing the border in
El Paso as she was searching for the four trucks that Adam drove. He thought he could and within the hour she had footage of the traffic on Interstate 20 from about a month ago. Using software on her laptop, she set her facial recognition to look for the four license plates of the trucks that Adam drove.

  The footage was for a period of a week and she observed the four trucks crossing the border checkpoint traveling in both directions several times during that week. Likely the border guards stopped the tankers at the border and looked for oil. Either the tanker was specially engineered to hold oil and something else, or they had bought off the border crossing guards. She thought it was likely the former. In order to build their legal case and understand the size of this operation, she asked Guerrero to see if they could obtain tapes from a year ago or even four years ago. He passed on her request to his contact but did not expect a reply until the next morning.

  The Chief had an arrival time of the DEA agents and scheduled a meeting to accommodate that arrival time. He gave thought of others to invite and decided to keep the group limited as one never knew where the cartel had informants including inside the State of Texas. With everyone kicking back over the next two or more hours, Jill decided to give Nathan a call and update him on the situation. He would be pleased to know that the ‘real’ cops would be doing any hidden surveillance.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Hey babe, how’s Odessa Texas,” asked Nathan.

  “Interesting at the moment,” Jill said as she gave Nathan a review of the day’s developments.

  “I’m very glad you’re not going out with the police to investigate the oil wells and buildings. If this is the tip of the iceberg of a cartel transportation business, it’s going to get violent at some point.”

  “Yeah, I agree,” Jill said and then went on to tell him about the previous night’s caper.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about that this morning?” Nathan asked.

  “It was too early in the day for you to worry about me.”

  “When you’re on a case, I have a baseline level of worry about you every day, but in this case I might have actually felt better knowing there was a cop with you and you were wearing body armor.”

  “Have I told you how much I love you today? I really appreciate your support for my job.”

  “Love you too, Jill and this case worries me. You know these narco guys carry automatic weapons. They don’t have to have precision to kill you rather they do sweep arcs with the gun which makes it very hard to survive; it’s rather like a firing squad. Your bug spray will lose against the might of their guns.”

  “Actually I agree with you and I’m content to stay behind the cops. Even Jo said to quit the case. I don’t think any of us are underestimating the fire power of this group.”

  “When do you think you’ll be home?” Nathan asked.

  “I really don’t know,” Jill replied. “I don’t have proof of the murder, yet. The DEA and Odessa police may break open a huge narcotics transportation and manufacturing scheme for which Adam will surely go to jail, but I’ve got nothing that ties him to his wife’s murder. It’s been very frustrating. Perhaps if they have enough to arrest Adam today and get a search warrant for his house, we’ll find the arsenic used in the blueberry muffins, but even that may be hard to prove. If Adam is thought to be in jail for a long time, the Dallas PD may decide that’s enough for them and fire me as a consultant. Arsenic is not used at all in the petroleum industry and is really only used in the manufacturing of semi-conductors. So if some of the compound is found in his house, he would have no reason to own it. It’s circumstantial evidence but people have been convicted with much less.”

  “Trixie is beginning to miss you. I took her for a run yesterday and she wasn’t happy that I run at a faster pace than you. She didn’t have sufficient time to sniff all the animal scents that she wanted.”

  “I can imagine,” Jill said with a laugh. “You run the mile nearly three minutes faster than I and as a breed known for running along with horses, she has the speed. She just can’t multi-task like she does with me.”

  Jill looked up as people came into the conference room and said, “Got to go, love you.”

  Jill viewed the new faces that filed into the conference room. She waited for introductions and had her thoughts confirmed that these were the DEA agents. She looked at her watch and noted that Castillo’s plane arrived in half an hour at the Midland airport. Jill knew she didn’t want to leave this conference room and go pick him up so she texted him suggesting that she was needed here and for him to get a rental car or taxi.

  Guerrero had been given the lead on this group from the Odessa group and so he began the meeting by calling for introductions and an explanation of why they were in the room. When Jill’s turn came she could see surprise on several faces when she mentioned the murder and her role with Dallas PD.

  “Dr. Quint, do you think there is a connection between the murder and this chemical transportation network?” asked Agent Black of the DEA.

  She provided a lengthier explanation of Adam’s lies about Stacy’s relationship to the Sinaloa cartel and her encounter with the men in the parking lot in Dallas. Then she answered the agent’s question.

  “Yes, I think there is a relationship between the two events. I think that Stacy somehow found out about Adam’s role in the transportation. Maybe she saw his truck license and asked, or maybe she was driving around town and saw Adam driving the truck. She had a life insurance policy through her employer and getting that money was probably icing on the cake. Adam seems to have a central role in this transportation process and this has to be generating income for him.”

  Jill continued, “One of my team members researched Vernon Oil and said the company had strange financials. It was gaining more cash for its shipments than other oil companies. So Adam can’t be the only one that knows those tankers are filled with something other than oil. My team has been unable to locate how Adam is personally profiting from his role and he must. Why would he risk it all if not to have a financial benefit? So perhaps he has a separate identity and bank account in Mexico and payments are deposited there.”

  She finished her explanation and noted a text from Castillo that he’d landed and rented a car and would be at Odessa PD in about twenty-five minutes.

  “And you have been unable to identify the men who posed as hotel employees nor the three in the parking lot in Dallas?” questioned Agent Black.

  “I have what I consider to be the best facial and object recognition software in the world, and because we don’t have full frontal facial pictures of the men, I’ve been given over one-hundred matches. If these are cartel minions, and they haven’t touched the justice system in Mexico, then it is possible that they are not in any worldwide databases and my list of matches.”

  “Did you try to pare down those one hundred matches?”

  “No, would you like the list?”

  “Yes, we have a separate database that collects pictures of cartel men that we have captured on cameras placed in areas that we know they hang-out like bars and stripper clubs,” replied Agent Black. “So this picture collection of ours is not on any known database worldwide.”

  “It would be helpful on many levels if you could identify these men.” Jill said. “I just sent it to you, so you should see it in your in-box.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Quint. I’ve a much smaller database as you can imagine and it excludes men’s names often given the circumstance in which it is collected, but we do have the men identified by cartel affiliation. Detective Guerrero, tell me about the operation you were planning on running tonight.”

  “We have all of the properties of the BDC Company that we’d like to explore. Jill and I did one warehouse last night and found a perfectly clean and empty warehouse where a tanker truck had sat for an hour earlier in the day. There were cameras on the building dismantled by cutting the power, but the camera caught our image before that happened. We had seven armed thugs show up to
take us on. So I would expect the other properties to be similarly wired if they’re used for the same purpose. I also worry that we’re tipping our hand to this group if we activate additional cameras.”

  “We also have the tank storage next to the non-pumping oil rig,” Guerrero continued. “I’m guessing there are more storage tanks out there among the one-hundred plus wells Vernon Oil owns. I would really like to get a full inventory of the sites this group is using. We’ll also have evidence in the four tanker trucks that Adam Johnson drives. We called the DEA into this operation because we need more manpower to get a full view of the evidence of the cartel operation. The last thing I want to see happen is for us to shut down a single warehouse, arrest Adam and the seven thugs, but allow the rest of the cartel’s operation to stay untouched; so I would like to have a discussion of how we achieve our goal of getting the entire operation closed and as many people arrested and sent to prison for as long a time as possible.”

  Castillo walked into the room and more introductions occurred as he was quickly briefed on the discussion. The DEA agent asked Castillo what the role of the Dallas PD was.