Homewrecker Ch. 02

"The Intelligence Branch grant from 'R.C. Christian'." said Tanya. "It's for Intel Branch to present data to us in here, so we don't have to crowd into Intel and stand around."

"Good, the money's getting spent." I said. "But make sure we have a tight chain of custody of that money and where it went. Nothing under the table, and make damn sure none of it is spent outside the auspices of the grant. Too many Enemy eyes watching us on that."

"I'm all over it." said Deputy Chief Cindy Ross.

After everyone trickled in and was seated, Chief Moynahan said "It's your meeting, Commander Troy, to delegate or to hold from this time forward."

"Captain Perlman?" I asked.

"Lieutenant Davis?" Tanya said, drawing some chuckles.

"Thank you, ma'am." said Jerome Davis. "The buck stops here, especially if Joanne Warner is deer hunting."

"You've got the bad jokes part of the job down pat." Teresa Croyle said flatly.

"Yes ma'am," said Jerome, "and you might as well laugh, because they don't get any better. First, let's get a Crime Lab report. Mark?"

Mark Walker said "A search of the entire property and the properties next door failed to find the murder weapon. We also have catalogued and run facial rec on all the video we have, which is a good bit. 'No joy' with any of our suspects, so far. And no one sneaking in or out during the night in a suspicious way."

"Here's a question." I said. "Did anyone examine the door to 801 or 804, to see if there was any blood on the handle or key entry system?"

"Yes sir!" said Tanya Perlman happily. "In fact, our guys examined every door on the 8th floor, including to the stairwells and around the elevator. We checked for blood on the carpet of the hallway. Nothing that can help us was found."

"That is outstanding." I said. "Just outstanding that the Crime Lab did that thorough a job. And nothing being found is in itself excellent data. Okay, let's continue."

Jerome said "Okay, Washington and Parker, what did you get in the City?"

Theo gave a synopsis of their meetings with Charles Caldwell and Earl Edwards, then said: "We confirmed with the Marriott Grande Hotel that Caldwell was at a dinner last night, and that he stayed in a room there. They can't confirm he was in that room every minute, but camera footage shows him in the hallway just after midnight, and in the conference rooms hallway earlier. Earl Edwards's Union boys vouched for his presence at their social hall, and we'll have to get something solid to counter their stone wall."

Theo: "Also, we showed the hotel staff at the Marriott Grande a picture of Beverly DeAngelo. One of the managers there said he'd seen her before, with Caldwell and with other men, but it was months ago. He thought she was an escort girl. We also got in touch with some of the other bank people, and they said Caldwell was with them at the party at the hotel. Colleagues may not be the best vouchers, but they spoke up for him readily enough, and it'd be reasonable doubt with any jury."

"So how does everyone feel about Charles Caldwell?" I asked.

"I'm eliminating him from my suspect list." Julia Rodriguez said with alacrity. All eyes turned to her, and she said "If she and Caldwell had been seeing each other that often, and after his divorce, whether for personal or business relationships, then he's had tons of opportunities to kill her. But he didn't, and as much as the Commander hates alibis... he's got a pretty good one."

I nodded. "That's Iron Crowbar thinking. Again. Here, hold this." I handed Julia the red crowbar. She tapped it in her hand like I like to do.

"And Earl Edwards?" I asked.

Theo said "He didn't seem to have any particular hatred of Beryl, and she apparently was just one of several women he 'indulged' with at the parties. We can't quite cross him off the list, though, until we dig deeper into him."

"Which we've done." said Lt. Mary Milton.

"That's your cue, Lt. Milton." said Lt. Davis. "What did Intelligence get for us today?"

Mary Milton said "Very quickly: we looked up CFO William 'Bill' Dalton, who was in room 804 next door to the crime scene room. He's 52 years old, married 30 years with a son and daughter in college. The son is at West Point, and the daughter at Harvard on a full ride scholarship from MegaTech. He was recruited to be the CFO five years ago. Before that, he was working for Arthur Wood at BigCommunicationsCorp, and he still sits on the boards of BigCommo and BigAgraFoods. He was a close associate of the late Mitt Willis."

Mary: "His finances appear clean, which means nothing if he's a good CFO. But he's never been audited by the IRS, he drives a 16-year-old Volvo when he's at home in California, and he and his wife live in a fairly modest home. His wife normally attends conferences with him, but did not attend this one."

Mary. "Next, Deborah Wilkins. She was in Room 806 last night, down the hall from 802. She's 32 years old, and has been with MegaTech Industries for six years. She became the Events Coordinator two years ago. Before that, she was part of Kara Zorn's personal staff, pretty much her personal assistant, and did so well coordinating functions that she was promoted."

"Out of curiosity," said Teresa Croyle, "where are you getting all that from? It's not like she and Kara Zorn are talking freely to us."

Mary nodded and replied: "Interviews of colleagues by our Officers, before they started circling the wagons and then shutting down. Also, from 'the Facebook', as the Sheriff calls it, and other social media pages of her and her colleagues, as well as the public and official MegaTech website."

"Cool beans. Sorry to interrupt." Teresa said.

"No problem, ma'am." said Mary. "Deborah Wilkins grew up in Racine, Wisconsin. She graduated from Northwestern with a massive amount of student debt, and she ran up her credit cards after graduating. She's managed to pay down most of the credit card debt, but the student debt is a crushing burden on her, even with her really good salary from MegaTech Industries."

Mary: "She's not married, never has been, no children, no brothers or sisters. Her parents died two years ago in a house fire, which the Fire Department there considered suspicious. They never proved arson, and eventually ruled it an accident, but the extended investigation was used by the BigBenefitInsurance to delay paying the life insurance or homeowners insurance policies to Deborah as the beneficiary. Deborah filed a lawsuit against them last month."

"Who are her attorneys on that?" I asked.

Mary looked at her information, then said "I don't have that, sir. I'll get it right away."

"All I want to know if MegaTech Industries lawyers are helping, or if she's hired someone outside their sphere of influence." I said. "Where was the lawsuit filed? Racine?"

"Yes sir, in Wisconsin." said Mary.

"Where was Deborah at the time of that tragic fire?" I asked.

"Uh, I don't have that, sir." said Mary.

"I wouldn't expect you to." I said. "But see if you can find out. In the meantime, tell us about the security men."

Mary said: "The security men that were arrested are direct employees of MegaTech Industries, and assigned to top-tier Officers, which Deborah Wilkins is considered to be. The one who resisted arrest and tried to pull a gun on Mr. Roark is named Rollin Heller. Ex-military, served in Afghanistan, nothing bad on his record but he had a couple of misdemeanor disorderly conduct charges. The other guy, Bernard Collins, is a former Navy MA, which is 'Masters-at-Arms', the equivalent of the Army's Military Police. He has no bad marks on his military record, and no arrests."

Mary: "They were both hired straight out of the military as Security for MegaTech Industries, and they usually are part of the forward team that sets up the conferences, providing security. They've been working with Deborah Wilkins since she became Events Coordinator. There's nothing out of the ordinary about their finances."

Julia Rodriguez said "Sounds like they were just overprotective of Deborah Wilkins. But I clearly displayed my badge to them, so no excuse."

I replied "To be totally accurate, Heller was the overprotective one. Collins didn't resist arrest at all, so we could drop all charges against him and hammer Heller. And I might suggest Heller's overprotectiveness of Deborah might be more personal than professional. We need to interrogate him at County Jail about that."

Teresa said "If there's a personal relationship between Heller and Wilkins, why hasn't she helped him out, sent a lawyer to help?"

"She was a bit busy today, ma'am." said Teddy Parker. "She might not know he's still in jail, thinking MegaTech took care of them or at least sent them lawyers. And she was spirited out of Town... and the State... so fast, she might not've had the chance to help them."

"Good points." I said. "Okay, before we get into other things, I have one question: how did the Hotel not know their camera was painted over?"

Lt. Jerome Davis said "I had a long talk with the Manager, Rob Rhineheart, about that and some other things. He said he told Security that it was okay that the camera was blacked out, as Elliot Sanders and his wife required their privacy, and he was trying to accommodate them. He also is mad at us: MegaTech told him they're not paying for the hotel rooms and conference rooms for Saturday and Sunday, even though they're contractually obligated to, and they told him if he gave them any flak about it, they wouldn't consider the Town & County Hyatt Hotel for any future events."

"My heart bleeds." I said. "That's actually good for the Hyatt Hotel's reputation. They absolutely should sue MegaTech Industries."

"That'd just cost more money than they'd have made for the weekend." Teresa replied.

"That's a point." I said. "Okay, what did Intel find out about our five guys that have made our suspect list?"

Mary Milton said "Since Teddy and Theo already talked to them, I'll talk about Earl Edwards and Charles Caldwell first. Earl is your quintessential Union boss. He's been doing pipefitting and welding since he graduated high school. Tough guy, just as ready to hit someone on the head with a pipe as put a welding torch to it. He was part of Moe Molinari's construction crews when Molinari was still in the development business, which means he was Molinari's muscle when it was needed."

Mary: "He's a very minor figure within City Mob circles, and doesn't aspire to be much more than he is. And why bother? He's made good money over the years, probably with some extracurricular enhancement from time to time. Everything with him is cash-based, including paying his Union employees whenever he can get away with it. The only thing I found curious about him is that he and his Union gave a good bit of money to Governor Jared's campaigns. Seems he does not like the competition that Illegal Aliens provide."

"What competition?" Roark Coleman asked. "What he does is pretty high-skill work. One doesn't just hire someone off the street to do that stuff."

I replied "Non-Union shops will hire the cheap labor despite the lack of skills. But we're getting into the weeds on that. Any reason to put him at the top of the list regarding Beverly DeAngelo's murder?"

Jerome Davis spoke up: "I don't know if he should be the prime suspect, but he's not off my list. He's capable of committing a murder like that. For other people, there would have to be some extreme hatred fueling them, but he could do it in a 'professional' manner, so to speak."

"Good point." I said. "Okay, the other guys."

"Charles Caldwell." Mary said, her voice dripping with sardonic acerbity. "It is very possible that I'm going to refer this man to the SBI-OFI (Office of Financial Investigations) when our case here is done. Mr. Purvis?"

Christopher Purvis said "Thank you, ma'am. ADA Franklin Washington got me a warrant from Judge Watts to dig into Caldwell's finances as well as those of his bank. On the legal and legitimate side, Caldwell has done less work than any other banker in that company, made the fewest number of loans, and managed the least amount of money. It might be the best analogy to say he's the bank's equivalent of Deborah Wilkins: he's the de facto event coordinator."

Purvis: "However, he has a side business, which is listed as a Venture Capital firm. Money has been flowing in from companies with addresses that are empty warehouses, sometimes even vacant lots. And some of the so-called companies he's 'investing' in range from restaurants and bars that seem to be legit but have gambling tables in the secret rooms in back, to outright escort services. And guess where he hires girls for his parties from? The escort firms he's funding."

Theo Washington said "He said that Beverly DeAngelo was putting together an agency... he called it 'a stable of girls'. Maybe he was funding that?"

"If she really was doing that." said Purvis. "I can't find any indication that she was running an escort business, under any name under any of her aliases."

I said "I'll interject now and say that I'm not convinced she was starting up a business like that, either. Doesn't fit what we know about her. And that could be a motive for Caldwell... he wanted her to run an escort service, but she refused, so he waxed her."

"But what about his alibi?" Theo asked.

Mark Walker said "That's something else I want y'all to look at. As Bettina says: 'Roll tape!'." He started up a video, which was of the Marriott Grande Hotel from Thursday night and Friday morning. The timestamps was in the upper right-hand corner.

Walker: "This is the video Theo and Teddy got from the Marriott Grande security people. It shows Caldwell several times, including going to his room after midnight. But do you notice anything strange about it?"

No one spoke up, so I said "It doesn't look like the typical 4x3 aspect ratio. It's wider left-to-right and shorter top-to-bottom."

"Not much gets past you, sir." Tanya said with a grin. "You're right."

Mark Walker said "If it was edited to cut off the real timestamp on top, it would be about this height and width. And the timestamp looks okay, but we cannot rule out that it was edited in."

"Why would the Hotel do that?" asked George Newman.

"He greased their palms, maybe?" replied Theo Washington. "And he probably does a good bit of business with them."

"Flip side of that." I replied. "Theo, you identified yourself as a TCPD Officer?" Theo nodded and I continued: "That hotel and their people have had to deal with me before, and I seriously doubt they want me back there in a professional way... my profession, that is." (Author's note: 'Reichenbach', Ch. 01-03.)

Roark Coleman said "Is Caldwell the kind of guy that could just slit a woman's throat in cold blood?"

Mary said "He's never had any arrests for violent crimes, nor was accused by his wife of physical abuse."

I said "But he has the underground cash flow and ultimately the money and connections to hire a professional hit on someone, including Beryl. So I'm sorry, Julia, but we can't rule this guy out, after all."

"I defer to the real deal." Julia said as she handed me back the red crowbar with a sad look on her face.

"You still had some excellent thoughts." I said, bringing her back to the lure. "Okay, it's getting late. Tell us about the others."

Mary indicated to Christopher Purvis to give the report. He said: "Andrew Adams. Lives in Southport and runs an art auction business, which is a thinly veiled front for an import/export operation. He's moved not only art, but tapestries and expensive rugs from India and the near-East, and jewelry, mostly diamonds and rubies, again through near-East sources. The FBI in Southport has been watching him for years, but to this point they've never raided him nor tried to sting him."

Purvis: "Adams was having an affair with Beryl Angel, beginning about five years ago. He spent a good bit of money on jewelry for a year, using his business accounts to make the purchases. About a year into the relationship, his wife hired a P.I. to catch him in the act, which was no trouble for that P.I. to do. She filed for divorce, and he fought back hard. It got really ugly, and neither side backed down an inch."

Purvis: "The divorce trial is fascinating reading, even if you don't normally like that stuff. The wife accused Adams of hiding money and laundering money to keep her from getting any of it. So the judge had the State Tax Authority do a forensic audit of his finances and his business. He had to keep things clean during that time, and the jewelry and clothing purchases for Beryl Angel dropped off completely, which caused her to leave him."

Purvis: "In the end, the judge ruled mostly in Andrew's favor, and his wife didn't get very much at all. But his businesses were hurt by the forensic audit and the expense of the divorce trial. He's still working it, but the cash flow isn't nearly what it used to be."

"And that was four years ago?" said Roark Coleman. When Purvis nodded, Roark said "So if he harbored a grudge against Beryl for leaving him and hurting his business, why take this long to come after her?"

"Didn't know where she was?" suggested George Newman.

"Let's not theorize without data, people." I admonished everyone. "Let's keep going."

"If I may ask," said Roark Coleman, "who was the P.I.? Maybe he remembers the case, if we could find him? We can get his name from the Court records of the divorce------"

"I already have found him." I said. "And he is now a confidential informant. And I'll be very candidly blunt, Mr. Coleman: if you do think about looking up his name, be sure to first evaluate your desire to remain employed by the Town & County Police Force. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes sir." said Coleman, a bit meekly.

"Lt. Milton, you were saying?" I said.

Mary Milton said "I'll talk about Darryl Dawson. He's 44 years old, and an attorney with Prodder, Ryder & Reems, based in their Midtown office. Not many can afford his legal services. His specialty is putting together large deals, such as buying or developing buildings and other projects. He has a lot of connections with Legislators of both political Parties, and some say he's basically a lobbyist-for-hire. No arrests, but he had a few speeding citations that mysteriously never made it to Court."

"Chief, did you hear of him when you were down there?" I asked.

"I've heard the name." said the Chief. "I think Mizzz Millllton is correct about him being a lobbyist. But he never crossed my path. Ms. Croyle, did you hear of him while you were in Midtown I.A.?"

"No sir." said Teresa. "But I wasn't down there very long. And other, bigger fish were in front of me at the time."

"So what's his story with Beryl?" I asked Mary, to get the train back on track.

Mary Milton: "First, let me tell you that he is the older brother of Rusty Dawson, who came over all dead in our County with a 'Pink Panther' disc golf disc in his room." (Author's note: 'Pink Panther', Ch. 01.) "Darryl was the golden child, while Rusty was the worthless runt of that family."

"One of my favorite cases." I said fondly. "But go ahead with this current case."

Mary: "About three years ago, the firm of Ramon, Castro, and Partners in Southport, allegedly on behalf of Dawson's wife, hired a P.I. to investigate him. The P.I. found out that Dawson was in a pretty steady relationship with Beryl Angel."

"Wait." I said. "You said 'allegedly'? Explain that."

Mary said "There is some question of whether she went to them or they reached out to her first, sir."

"Okay." I said. "Sorry to interrupt. Keep going."

Mary: "Dawson was paying for a high-end apartment for Beryl in Midtown, and she would accompany him to dinners and events he attended with politicians and big business people. I've asked Nell Bell in Midtown to help gather any information on him that she can, and she said she'd get what she can and get back to us."