Big in Japan Ch. 02

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Just before 8:00am, Julia Rodriguez came to my office. "Sir," she asked as she handed me a written report, "how much of this should I mention in the meeting with the Feds?"

"All of it." I said as I looked at the report. "Just report normally, as if you're just talking to me and your fellow Detectives. But if the Feds start asking a lot of questions you really don't have an answer to, nor want to answer, defer to me on it..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

At 8:00am, we all convened in Classroom 'E'. Representing the TCPD was Chief Moynahan, Your Iron Crowbar, Cindy Ross, Teresa Croyle, Tanya Muscone, Jerome Davis, Julia Rodriguez, and Joanne Warner.

"No one from Intel is here?" Tanya asked as she drove in, her voice downright scornful.

"No." I said, a bit woodenly. "Penny Scott is in the Intel Room now, working on data. Everyone else was told, and told by me personally, to stay at home today."

"But sir..." Tanya started. I looked right through her.

"You may consider me to be all the 'Intel Branch' we need today." I said authoritatively. "Do I make myself clear, Captain?"

"Yes sir." Tanya said, though she was clearly still unhappy about it.

Federal Agents were ushered into the room. They were Jack Muscone, Karina White, Melina Allgood, Eduardo Escobar, Tim Jenkins, Nancy Harding, Dwight Stevens, Juan Alberto Morales, and Lindy Linares.

"Okayyyyy,:" said Chief Moynahan, starting the meeting. "First, I appreciate Loo-tenant Davis making our coffee this morning in good Navy tradition I for one needed this coffee molasses to get woken up." We all chuckled; indeed, Jerome's 'Navy' coffee was made strong.

"Commander Troy," said the Chief, "tell us what is going on, herrrrrre."

"Yes sir." I said. "Let's start with the crime scene report."

"I have that, sir." said Detective Sergeant Julia Rodriguez. "The home is owned by Sean Sanderson, who rescued it from near-bankruptcy after his mother Cassie Sanderson went to prison for murder. He has been renting it out to BOW Enterprises for several years, and they've maintained the rent and the house all that time, but apparently it is not regularly lived in."

Julia: "The house itself was strangely furnished. There were cooking and eating utensils in the kitchen, one sofa and chair in the main living room but no television set, and the office room that was the crime scene only had one desk and chair. Upstairs, the master bedroom and bath were fully furnished, and were clean but looked lived-in. The other two bedrooms had beds, as well."

Julia: "As I said, there were no televisions in the house at all, nor any landline phones. But there is a wi-fi internet setup, and it is one of the most modern, up-to-date, and powerful setups that exist today. The security it has made me jealous."

"BOW Enterprises guesthouse?" asked Nancy Harding. "An out-of-town guest there might need the security, as BOW is involved in several classified projects." Several pairs of eyes looked over at me.

"Yes, someone needed that level of security." I said. "Keep going, Julia."

Julia: "Yes sir. The deceased has been positively identified as that of Easton Windham, who was Commander Croyle's former husband, and my condolences to you, Commander." There were murmurs of similar sentiment around the room

Teresa replied "Thank you, but it's been years and years since that time."

Nancy Harding said "With all due respect, since you do have that past connection with him, shouldn't you recuse yourself from this investigation?" The TCPD Officers in the room, including the Chief, were looking at Harding with daggers in their eyes. Some of the Federal Agents also were looking at her with stunned expressions on their faces.

I said "I kept her out of the crime scene for just that reason, and she will not be actively participating in my Detectives's investigation. She's here in this meeting precisely because she has that long-past connection, and my have helpful information over time. Continue with your narrative, Detective Rodriguez."

Julia continued: "Thank you, sir. The body was found in the office room, just off the hallway that goes to the garage. The perp or perps tortured him. Martha the M.E. will have more details on the sequence of events when she releases her full autopsy. She did tell me that the official cause of death was bleeding out, and that the time of death was likely within an hour of the first responding Officers arriving and finding the body around 12:30am."

"Oh, it was closer than that!" said Tanya. "The body was warm and the blood was very fresh."

"Ma'am, and everyone," said Lt. Jerome Davis, "I also checked and found that our guys got to that house within ten minutes of the last 9-1-1 call, which came in at 12:20am."

I said "Martha will never be convinced to give an exact time of death, unless there are eyewitnesses that can independently testify to it. Suffice it to say our Officers got there nearly in time. Go ahead, Julia."

Julia: "Thank you, sir. And to that point, our Dispatchers did what they were supposed to: they activated all the street cameras we have control over in that area. To give you Federal Agents a complete picture: the cameras are always on, and can be monitored. But they usually don't record unless and until someone runs a red light, speeds through an intersection, drives the wrong way or in the wrong late, stuff like that. In this case, our dispatchers manually activated the recording devices in that area."

Julia: "Unfortunately, what we recorded was apparently too late. We've drawn a total blank. Camera coverage showed no cars going in or out of that neighborhood once they began recording."

"How well were the cameras operating?" Lindy Linares asked. "By that I mean, did you check to see if there are gaps in the coverage, stuff like that?"

"We need someone from Intel in here to tell us that." said Tanya Muscone, drawing some dark looks... especially from me.

Julia said "Officer Scott in Intel collected the video and sent it to me to analyze this morning, which I did. I saw no gaps in the timestamps, but the perps wouldn't need but two seconds... literally... to freeze a camera's image. Kind of like getting that 'circle of death' for just one second when you're watching a YouTube video."

"That's a good analogy." I said. "And yes, the technology exists for someone in a car to cause a street cam to freeze like that for just a second or two, and you can't tell when you see the digital video, since the clock runs while the feed is frozen. It's a flaw in the system that can be exploited if one knows how to do it... and few people outside national Intelligence agencies really know how to do it."

"Has our Intel Branch gotten anything on the victim, Easton Windham?" Tanya Muscone asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm and derision.

"Why don't you and I go check that out now, Captain?" Teresa Croyle said as she got up.

"We're in a meeting, ma'am-------" Tanya started.

"Cap-tnnnnn," said Chief Moynahan, "that was not a suggestion from your direct superior Officer. You are ex-cuuuuused. Get moving." Tanya scowled, but put her wheelchair in motion and drove out the door Teresa was holding open for her. The Iron Wolf followed her out, then shut the door behind them. The Federal Agents had been looking over at Jack Muscone, to see what he was going to do.

Muscone looked angry, but he made a wise decision for a change: he said "Not to besmirch the TCPD's Intel Branch, but I would be surprised if they found anything beyond what Commander Croyle told them about her ex-husband. And I say that because we Feds have not done much better. Lindy, do you have anything at all?"

"Not much, sir," said Lindy, "and it's not from lack of trying. If it weren't for Teresa... er, Commander Croyle, we might not know a thing about him. He and Teresa were enrolled at a small School out west, and his records are obscure except for his transcript and confirmation of his graduation. And he may have been using aliases to get jobs, because we simply have no employment trail nor IRS trail on him at all."

"If I may," said Eduardo Escobar, "that is one reason we were speculating that Easton Windham was using his older brother Weston Windham's identity. We originally thought they might have just been the same person, masquerading as two different people."

"Still," said Karina, "and not to impugn you, Lindy, nor the data people of either the FBI or the TCPD, but how does someone disappear so completely for so long?"

I said "It's not all that hard, really. There are three reasons why someone might seemingly disappear off the face of the earth. One, he doesn't want to be found by law enforcement authorities, and makes efforts to hide or change his identity. Two, by chance his life is totally mundane, and he does things like pay all his bills in cash, and therefore he slips through the cracks. Three, because the Government doesn't want him found, which applies to people placed in Witness Protection, or become CIA assets, i.e. spies."

"For example," I continued, "none of you in here could possibly know, unless Teresa told you, that while she and Easton were married, they had a roommate in their apartment in their School's Married Housing. His name was Jack Burke."

I felt the mental ripples in the room, but I continued anyway: "If you look into Jack Burke, you may eventually find that he was my college roommate for a while, that he left (Wildcat School) under strange circumstances, and generally disappeared."

Feeling Melina and Joanne's eyes on me as I discussed the stud that had deflowered both women (Author's note: 'Case of the Murdered Lovers', Ch. 02 for Melina; 'The Eightfold Fence', Ch. 01 for Joanne.), I continued: "Jack was a drifter. He never changed his name, but it took an expensive investigation by Henry Wargrave to find his story for his parents. We do know he was briefly in Texas, working on oil rigs. And then he made his way to our Town & County, and ended up murdered."

I continued: "And Easton Windham was Teresa's roommate, so to speak, then disappeared, was briefly known to be in Texas working for an oil company, then ended up in our Town & County... murdered. Funny how coincidences work, eh wot?"

"Not funny at all." Jack Muscone muttered. Then he said more loudly. "Eduardo, why don't you fill in the picture of why this murder is a disaster for our investigation."

Eduardo said "I believe everyone in here has a security clearance?" Everyone nodded, and Eduardo said "We had a twofold mission in Texas. First, my wife Rosalyn was trying to turn Jen Sakai back to our side, and we got wind that people... serious people... did not want that to happen, and were trying to come after Jen."

Eduardo: "Our second mission was the whisky and drug smuggling through Mexico to nations friendly to Red China, and then into Asia. To be honest, the whisky part didn't bother us so much, but the drugs did. And the ATF was also looking into possible arms smuggling, which would be really bad in a country like Japan that has strict gun laws. Law-abiding subjects of His Imperial Majesty aren't armed like here in the USA."

Eduardo: "We had been working with Japanese Intelligence on a lot of this. We hoped that Takaki Mariko would work with us, to turn Jen and also to help interdict the trafficking. But she never came down to Houston; the Japanese determined that there were threats to her safety. Those threats turned out to be the same ones towards Jen Sakai. So we joined forces with them, put out some 'fake news' about secretly transporting Jen and Mariko to Dallas and then flying them to Seattle."

"So why did you think the Yakuza would try to sabotage the Ichimoku plane?" I asked, my voice sounding casual, belying the pointed nature of the question.

"Uh, I'll get to that in a minute." said Eduardo, who was rattled by the question. "So where I'm going with this, is that the perps instead went after Teresa Croyle and Cindy Ross's plane at Lake Charles Airport. We were totally blindsided by that. And we're still struggling to understand why. We're speculating that Jen Sakai managed to get a message out, and had to prevent Teresa from talking to Clarissa Esterson, or taking Teresa out afterwards to keep any knowledge Teresa had from getting into the open."

"Theorizing without data." I said.

"You think that's wrong?" asked Karina White, mostly to open the door for me to speak. And I walked right through that door.

"Let me answer that question with a question." I said. "How did Jen Sakai even find out Teresa was going to Lake Charles, much less be able to redirect a planned sabotage operation from Dallas to Lake Charles, or even Houston to Lake Charles? And how would Jen Sakai know that they were flying in a Vision plane, not a BOW Enterprises plane?"

I continued: "And what information could Teresa be told that would require her being killed? And for that matter, why hasn't there been an attempt to kill Teresa's aunt, Clarissa Belvedere Esterson, who is the only person that could've given Teresa that really important information? And if Clarissa had such information, why wasn't she killed years ago?"

Your Iron Crowbar: "And I'll leave you with this last question, then say no more: What was the result of the FBI investigation of the plane crash that took the lives of Weston and Tessa Windham?"

"Was there an FBI investigation of that plane crash?" asked Karina. "I'm sure you know that the NTSB handles those things..." She let her voice trail off deliberately.

"I also know that the NTSB called in the FBI when they, the NTSB, found evidence of sabotage." I replied. "So... what was the result of the FBI's investigation?"

"Sounds like you already know." said Muscone. "If you do, stop playing around and tell us."

"And that's the point." I said. "I shouldn't have to tell the FBI about what the FBI did... or else you, plural, already know, which I believe to be the case." Muscone looked daggers at me. I just looked right back at him.

Eduardo Escobar broke the building tension in the room by saying: "You're right, Commander. I did look up the NTSB and FBI reports of that case after Teresa's incident. The NTSB found a fulminate compound, which is an explosive and often used to detonate more explosives. The FBI's investigation was inconclusive, and they closed it pretty quickly when they couldn't find anything that led them to who might have done it. In other words, they didn't waste time nor manpower on it."

"And there you go." I said. "My point of it is the FBI ended their investigation very quickly... almost prematurely. And like I said, I'll just leave it at that. Whether or not you go forward with it, is up to you."

"Are you trying to tell us something, Commander?" Nancy Harding asked sharply.

"He just did tell you something." said Cindy Ross. That had Jack Muscone peering at her.

"If you know something," Muscone said, "you need to tell us." Cindy just looked over at me.

"Better be sure." I said, knowing what she was thinking about. "Reeeeel sure."

"What?!" Muscone almost yelled. "If you know something, you have an obligation to tell us!"

"Obligation?" Cindy fired back. "I have no obligation to you! None at all!" Muscone was rising to his feet in anger, and Cindy did the same defensively.

"And furthermore to the point," the Green Crowbar said, "I understand what the Iron Crowbar is implying, that if I say something an innocent person may die. And I trust the Iron Crowbar's judgement over my own. We've already seen what happened when you didn't listen to Don, and an innocent man hanged himself-------"

"HE WASN'T INNOCENT!" Muscone yelled.

"You got proof of that?" I asked, still sitting down, but gripping my crowbar and preparing to spring out of my seat, my back notwithstanding.

"MIS-TER CROWBAR!" the Chief said loudly. "Let's just not go therrrrre."

"I'm done here." said Muscone. "Federal Agents, we'll take this back up at the Federal Building. Let's go." He began walking to the door, then looked back when the Federal Agents were slow to get up and go with him. They gathered their things and followed at various rates of speed... except Melina, who remained seated.

"You coming?" Jack Muscone growled at her.

"No." said Melina. "I've got further business with these guys." Muscone said nothing, but walked out, shutting the door hard behind him. Astute Detectives would realize that she either had considerable moxie or considerable power to defy a higher-ranking Federal Agent like that. You make the call on which one it was... or both.

"It appearrrrrs," drawled the Chief, "that we still have a mountain to climb to repair our relations with Mis-ter Mus-connnnne..." He was looking at me as he said it. I just looked right back at him, and did not say a word.

"Commander," the Chief continued, "is there something the Feds need to know, that you're not telling them?"

"Nothing factual, sir." I said. "Some of my opinions, most definitely. And sir, during the course of this morning's conversations, I gave them as many clues as I could. If they have their heads so far up their Federal fourth-points-of-contact that they can't figure it out... that's not my problem, sir. No offense, Melina."

"None taken." Melina replied. "And you are absolutely right that some of them have their heads up their asses..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It did not get better. When I went to my office, Teresa Croyle was already waiting inside. She refused my offer of coffee, so I poured myself some and sat down heavily in my chair, my back already hurting.

"What?" I said simply.

"Sir," Teresa said formally, "it's Captain Muscone. I know she's directly under your command and not mine, but I'm getting sick and tired of her insubordination, to me and to you. She keeps whining about the structure change that puts Lieutenant Mary Milton directly under you. I tried to talk to her in a 'friendly' way about the snide comments she made regarding no one in Intel being in the room, and she said she should've been able to force Lieutenant Milton to be at that meeting, and force Lieutenant Milton to help the Feds."

"Okay, I'm done with this." I said. "I'll need either you or Cindy to be the formal witness to this. Is she still here?"

"I don't know, sir." Teresa said.

I found out by speed-dialing her Police iPhone. "Where are you?" I asked when she answered.

"In my office, with Jack." Tanya replied.

"Come to my office." I said. "Just you. And now. Right now."

Part 9 - My Bourbon Journey

*Whirrrrrrrrrrr*

Tanya drove into my office and parked in front of my desk. Teresa closed the door behind her, and then sat down on the sofa, putting herself behind Tanya and off her left side. I made a point to show the seriousness of this meeting with my first question:

"Do you want a Union Rep?" I asked.

"Sir?" Tanya asked, then recovered and said "Do I need one?"

"That's for you to decide." I said. "But this is formal, it is pure protocol, so no speaking freely. Commander Croyle is here as my formal witness, and I will be writing up a report of this meeting."

"What's it about, sir?" Tanya asked.

"I'll just cut to the chase, and get right to the core of it." I said. "What is your problem with Lieutenant Mary Milton?"

Tanya's face bore a look of determination set in stone as she said "Lieutenant Milton has been insubordinate to me, her direct boss at the time of the incidents. She also has refused to work with or help the FBI despite my legal and reasonable orders to do so. I believe that I had every right and expectation for her to work for and with the FBI if and when I told her to, and I still do. She is wrong, dead wrong, to refuse to help them, especially when instructed to do so."