Internal Affairs Ch. 08

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The end is here.
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Part 8 of the 15 part series

Updated 10/28/2022
Created 08/07/2014
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He still had the patrol car parked outside of the insurance agent's office at night on his mind. He should bring in all the officers, of the squad on duty at the times of the complaints. He had a feeling that since it was a morals issue that would never happen.

He could get a general warning about girlfriends and sex on the job issued, but he wanted to target it a little closer. He also wanted it to come from the desk cops, if they felt the brass badge group felt it had to come out at all. Since he was on everyone's shit list, he decided that the information needed to come through Hillary at the very least.

"Hills, I got these old complaints from that box of cold files you wanted me to read. Take a look at this one please?" Roger asked.

"Okay," she said. "I thought you might want to see this. It's a report from the state police lab. It was forwarded by Deputy Sykes with a copy to the volunteer fire department." she said.

While she read the file on the mysterious patrol car, Roger read the file from the forensic lab. They identified the fire starter used in the fire at his house.

It was no shock to Roger that it had been a glass bottle filled with gasoline. Where anyone found a glass bottle by that time was hard to fathom. The burn pattern was consistent with a shattered container. They also found a piece of colored glass on the floor under the window. Probably because the suspect glass was green the lab concluded that they were not consistent with the window pane. It also had no prints.

They also determined that the liquid in the bottle was a mixture of gasoline and oil. Weed whacker, everyone in the area owns one, Roger thought. He just filed it away in his mind's file cabinet.

"Some cop is screwing an insurance agent at work," Hillary said. "Nothing criminal there. It is a breach of department policy, but do we really want to open that can of worms."

"Hillary did you learn nothing from the last two years of my life. If you want to get a cop, you start out slowly. Then you start increasing the pressure on him. It might be nothing now, but it makes him vulnerable. We don't have to do more than identify him, check him out for other things, then call him in for an interview. Get it on record that it happened, but we couldn't prove it. Then we either scare him straight, or we know who to look at later down the line" Roger suggested.

"You know for a guy with a week on this job, you understand it. I mean you really understand it," Hillary said.

"Hills, they have had a chance to regroup. It's like a cancer, you have to get it all and keep testing for it," Roger said.

"Sometimes cancer kills the patient," she said.

"That sounds a little like a threat," Roger said.

"Not at all, I think you have had plenty of those over the years. So there is nothing to take to the bosses right now. Put some names to this, then we can kick it upstairs."

Roger turned away, then turned back. "You got any thoughts on the fire bomb?"

"Two cycle engine fuel and what the hell comes in a glass bottle these days?" she asked.

"Yeah, that's what I thought too," Roger agreed. "I wonder why the cop car complaints ended."

"Damn, do you always change subjects without any warning?" Hillary asked.

"I guess so," he said.

"They lost interest, or one of them got caught. Wives are a lot smarter than cops, so I'm told," she suggested.

"So there wouldn't be a trail, since he wouldn't have stopped seeing the woman, if his wife threw him out. If he did stop seeing her, maybe his wife caught him and he gave up his piece on the side to save his pension." Hillary looked at him curiously. "The wife would get half of it, even if he wasn't eligible at the time. If she had a good lawyer anyway."

"Then again maybe it was the husband that caught his girlfriend," Hillary said.

"Either way the complaints placed the car there at or around dinner time. He was there at least twice a week for a couple of months. You know it could be still going on. Maybe he just wised up and changed were he parks the car," Roger suggested.

"I can get the gps data for all the cars. They installed those things in there last year. I bet you that it was the same time the complaints stopped," Hillary said.

"If that was the case, the cop changed his pattern, but didn't necessarily clean up his act. So let's go at it from the other end. Who is the woman?" Roger asked.

"She is someone with a key to the building," Hillary said.

"All the staff most likely have keys. They probably have nothing in there of any value," Roger suggested.

"We are overlooking another possibility. The cop got rolled up in your investigation and is doing time," Hillary suggested. "The timing is right."

"So do you want to drop it?" Roger asked curiously.

"Not till we know. There may be no satisfactory ending here for several reasons. Put it on the back burner and work it when nothing else is pushing us. That is the same with the fire bomb," Hillary said.

"So how do we get a list of the employees of the insurance company?" Roger asked.

"They all have to have licenses. It might take a while, but we can get them," Hillary said.

"Or we could walk in and flash the badge and ask real nice," Roger said.

"I knew it. That's what you wanted all along. All right let's go talk to the officer manager," Hillary agreed. "I do enjoy being played, as long as it's on the job. You do understand?"

"Yeah, I got it," Roger said.

"Detective Bridges and this is Detective Everhart," Hillary said giving the receptionist a card. "We are with the internal affairs section of the police department, and we need to see the manager."

"You really should have called first," the receptionist said.

"What's your name miss," Hillary asked.

"Sara Jones," the twenty something girl said. Roger noted that she was very attractive. He wrote her name in his notebook. That was one name down, he thought.

"Miss Jones, I think your boss might like to speak with us. It will short circuit an inquiry, which we will otherwise have to take up with the insurance commissioner's office," Hillary said.

"Wait right here," she said.

After she had left the room Hillary turned to Roger and spoke softly. "Notice all the empty desks. They seem to be paring down the work force."

"It's a recession hadn't you heard," Roger said quietly. It was a sarcastic answer and Hillary recognized it as such.

The office manager came out with the receptionist following. "Hello Herman Hartley. I'm the office manager. Also I'm the senior agent."

Hillary went through the introductions a second time. "I would like to have a list of all your agents employed over the last six months, even those who are no longer employed by Great Northern Insurance Company."

"To be honest Sara and I are the only employees here. We have a phone bank. Most of Great Northern Insurance is sold by phone, or on the internet. I'm the agent of record for all of it. Believe me it's all legal," Hartley said.

"Then give me the names of your phone operators for the last six months. Also explain to Sara that when I call back to ask for more information, it would be a very good idea for her to cooperate," Hillary said.

"I will cooperate completely," Sara said.

Hillary looked at Roger as if to say don't trust anything this woman says. "Email those names to me," Hillary said. "My email is on the card you were planning to toss in the trash."

When they were outside she said, "Something is wrong in there."

"Do you reckon?" Roger agreed.

"When we get the files, we are going to start cross matching them with the personnel on D platoon," Hillary said.

"I don't think the name of our mystery man or woman will be in the names she sends us," Roger said. "My guess is they are busy destroying files as we speak."

"Sometime you just have to give them enough rope," Hillary said.

"I have heard that bullshit before," Roger said.

"You are so pessimistic," Hillary said. "Shall we go find out where the Insurance company does business. We should probably get the bank records for either Great Northern or Mister Herman Hartley or both," Hillary said.

"Oh I like that," Roger said. "Maybe as a byproduct of our search for the love sick cop, we can clean Mister Hartley's clock," Roger suggested.

"You do know how to turn a phrase Roger dear," Hillary said. "Before we do anything else, I have to call in a favor." Hillary made the call but Roger was told to leave the office while she did it.

All the next day Roger and Hillary chased around looking for bank accounts in either Great Northern insurance or Herman Hartley's names. At the end of Tuesday they had nothing. As far as the state banking commission was concerned The Great Northern Insurance company had no complaints and were licensed as an insurance broker. It took a while for Roger to wrap his head around the difference between an Insurance Broker, an Insurance Agent, and an Insurance provider.

When you think insurance company, it can be a provider, or a broker, or an agent who works for one or the other. If two clients bought insurance from Herman Hartley, he would assign the policy to Great Northern Insurance company, which was a brokerage company. The two people might have different insurance providers depending the information on their application. Great Northern would handle his payments and claims, but the money would be provided by the provider company. It was a screwy arrangement designed to avoid liability. The broker had no liability, but the provider company had no official standing in the state. Neither was regulated by the insurance commissioner. As Hartley had said, there was no law against it. It was a scam but a legal one.

It was 4:45pm when a black man in work clothes and a hard hat stopped by the office. Roger was alone in the office so of course he asked, "Can I help you."

"No, I don't think so," He moved to Hillary's computer.

"Hold on there. I can't let you mess with Miss Bridge's computer," Roger said.

"You better back off white boy," the man said.

"Who you calling white boy?" Roger asked. He was trying to decide whether to laugh or toss his ass against the wall.

"Hillary come in here and straighten your white boy out," the back man shouted toward the break room.

"Roger leave Jerome alone," Hillary said. "He is doing me a favor."

Roger put up his hands and backed away. After some pings and beeps the job, whatever it was, seemed complete.

"Tonight at 8pm." Jerome said as he walked out the door.

After he was gone, Roger asked, "What was that all about?"

"Jerome works for the cable company. If you or me were to climb the pole across the street from Herman's office, there would be hell to pay. Now who would expect this from a cable company?" she asked bring up a video feed showing the front door to Herman Hartley's office.

"Now we know if anyone, who isn't on our list, comes by for his or her final check," Hillary added.

"Beautiful, remind me to never, ever doubt you," Roger suggested. Roger also went back and pulled the video from the day before after the camera was first installed.

"I got the pictures, you get to stay and transfer them to a file for the computer lab. Have them run them against the DMV picture file and mugshots file," Hillary said.

"And what are you going to do while I do that?" Roger asked.

"Pay for them, of course," she said.

They were right in he middle of the grunt work on the Herman Hartley investigation, so it was a good time to take a day off. Roger had more than enough compensatory time. His plan was watch the off duty cops clean up his house fire site. Since he didn't give a crap what they thought, he wanted to inspect the job site before they left. He also planned to be tough on them.

Roger also expected to have Rose's fence crew showing up. After her last remarks to him, he had no love for her, or her crew. They were going to get a hard look as well.

He was a little paranoid, but as he told Hillary on his first day with internal affairs. "Being paranoid don't mean they weren't after him. Since she was another cop, it was easy for her to believe. It had been proven that his security concerns were justified.

He had walked the cleared area along the perimeter of his property for the last couple of days. So it was no big deal for him to do so that Wednesday morning as well. As much as he hated it, he ran the first two laps then walked four more. He figured two miles on the first day was a good start. It was hard to continue past two miles without an instructor threatening him. Roger laughed at the thought of hiring a teenager with a knife to chase him around the track.

After that two mile walk/run Roger showered then dressed for the day. He wore his cut off jeans since the weather as still mild.

The cops arrived about nine. He watched them pull up on his camera aimed toward the street. Two of the men came in the dump truck for trash and two more in a pickup truck. Roger waited until they got past the walking around looking phase. Once the men started picking up the trash and tossing it into the dump truck, Roger walked to the front of the lot.

Most of the men he recognized even if he couldn't put a name to the faces. He spoke to the man who was operating as the foreman.

"Good morning, how is it going?" Roger asked.

"We just got started, but it doesn't look as if there are going to be any problems. We have a couple of more guy and some other equipment coming in a few minutes. Once we get the trash, we will start on the standing structure."

"Good, it sounds like you know what you are doing," Roger said. "I did tell the boss that I wanted to leave the standing walls, if they are not in danger of collapsing. I know the roof structure has to come down so do what you have to. I'll be around if you have any questions."

"Good," the man suggested. Roger saw him join the others clearing the trash. Roger walked back to the house to get his notebook. His plan was to ride the scooter to Mcdonald's for coffee and a quick check of his super secret email.

Roger really didn't have any secrets. The account was for people who didn't want to be monitored. The small notebook had no hard drive at all. The bios was hard wired to the machine. The machine booted and ran from a flash drive. It either stored information in an online hard drive substitute or on a second flash drive. It also ran a heavy duty encryption program when the notebook shut down for any reason. The power for the notebook was provided by three alkaline AA batteries.

Roger kept an eye on the work while he researched the Great Northern Insurance Company. He went all over the net chasing information, but found nothing useful to his investigation.

After two cups of coffee Roger left the dining room. He resisted the urge to buy donuts on his way out of the parking lot, going directly home instead.

He waited until noon before the fence crew arrived. The gate proved to be a lot more complicated than he expected. The gate ran on large motorized wheels. Because of that it didn't need tracks. The camera had been mounted close enough to the gate post so that no changes were necessary. The sign on the fence gave instructions for using the intercom on the gate post. The activation of the intercom actually rang his cell phone.

It was well after six when the cop crew finished the cleanup. The second crew had brought a bobcat with them, so that they could safely collapse the roof.

The gate installation had taken only a couple of hours. They were all gone well before dark. There was no plan for any of them to return.

"Hello," Roger said into the cop cell phone.

"It's Hillary. I have spotted a woman who is not on the list. She appears to be a college student. The names of those provided to us were mostly unemployed men and women, who were hired as contract employees. Why her name was not included is a mystery. One that is going to require some further investigation. I think I will wait for you, so are you going to be back tomorrow?" She asked in a rush.

"Yes, everything is done. Are you still at the office?" Roger asked.

"Yes, but I'm headed out the door," Hillary said.

"Okay, I guess I'll see you tomorrow," Roger suggested.

"Well I though I might pick up a Pizza and come see you unless you have something else on for tonight," Hillary suggested,

"I have no plans, but let's do it at your place," Roger suggested.

"Oh I was sorta hoping for another movie," Hillary said.

"Then use your fancy telephone," Roger suggested.

"All right I need to get out of the house," Hillary admitted.

"In that case meet me at the Pizza Pit, and then after dinner we can come back to my place." Roger suggested.

"That will work. Are you going to ask why I need to get away from my place," Hillary asked.

"Not unless you have an assassin after you," Roger said.

"Nothing like that," Hillary said.

"Then I don't need to know," Roger suggested. He spent a couple of hours at home watching a TV show from the night before. Roger mostly watched reality shows, even though he knew most of them were anything but reality. The were more situational docudrama. Most where interesting enough, if you could forget that the man alone in the wild had a camera man with a gps device standing beside him. He was hardly a man lost and starving, in the wild. After his fake reality show set in the north woods, He checked and again and found all the worker's still gone.

Pizza at the pit was good, it always was. Hillary was all about work, which was the same as well.

Over a glass of wine, and a slice of pizza, She filled him in on the facts of the Herman Hartley investigation. At least the facts as she knew them to be at the time.

"I hate to turn this one over to the limp dicks," she informed him. "But we have no choice. We can't tie the insurance scam to cops. The cop car parked there proves nothing. The cop could have been off duty and stopping for coffee with his girlfriend. We have the camera set up and if he is still going there we will identify him.

"So another investigation ended too early," Roger said. "It's almost like you don't want us to do our job, but I know you are passionate about the game. My guess is someone is stopping you."

"You really shouldn't be doing that," Hillary said.

"Doing what," Roger asked.

"Guessing, surely I have taught you better," she said.

Roger noted that she didn't deny any of it. "So there are only two official bosses above you on the food chain. The Deputy Chief and the Chief, so which one is it. Either way the deputy chief is in the loop. He either told you on his own, or he passed on an order he knew to be illegal," Roger said.

"We have done nothing illegal. We just don't want to give the department any more bad press," Hillary said.

"It doesn't matter why. You are covering up cop misbehavior," Roger informed her.

"So are you going to the DOJ?" she asked.

"No, but I am going to roll over on you guys. I snitched on cops before, so it will be just another day at the office. I didn't risk my life and lose all my friends to have some paper pushing politician continue a hundred year old tradition of looking the other way," Roger said.

"They will kill you, if I tell them you said that," Hillary said.

"No hey wont Hills, they will order you to do it. Just like they ordered you to firebomb my house. You knew where I would be and you knew where I lived. You tossed the gasoline filled wine bottle through the window and drove straight back to the office. Tomorrow when I run the gps trace on your car for that day, I will have your ass." Roger said standing to walk toward the cash register.

"I knew no one was home at the house. I didn't know about the dog." Hillary said to his back.

"You need to do what you do best. Cover your ass," Roger said without turning back. He had of course recorded her on his smart phone. So it wouldn't be his word against hers. Too bad she hadn't fingered the Chief. Even so after even more bad press, he likely would be forced out.

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