One Night In Bangkok Ch. 01

"Yes." said Tsoulas. "For the last four years."

"Tell me about him." I said.

"He was a good Officer." said Tsoulas. "He was really good at teaching his Homicide Officers about everything, from crime scenes to building solid cases that would win in Court. Took care of his people, too."

"Do you know what he was working on recently?" I asked. "What might have taken him to Pottsville?"

"Not at all." said Tsoulas. "He didn't say anything to anyone, that I know of, didn't make any notes that I'm aware of. He had been out of the office for several days, and he told me that it was some leftover business from his time as a contractor in Iraq. We didn't have anything in Homicide that was not being taken care of, so I didn't worry about it."

"Yet," I said, peering at him like Carole peers at her mother whenever 'meetings' comes up, "you went to I.A. about his absences after a week?"

"Uh, no." said Tsoulas. "I.A. came to me. They were asking where he was, what he was doing. I told them what I just told you. They said not to say anything more about it, that they would start looking into it themselves. Then the Chief called me and said the same thing: to let I.A. handle it."

"And you still didn't ask him about it?" I asked.

"I never saw him again." said Tsoulas. "He didn't come in, and since I was under orders not to talk to him, I didn't try to call or email him, which would've left a trace." He glanced up at the light fixture in the ceiling as he said it. I nodded in understanding.

"True." I said. "So he left nothing at all that could've given you guys a clue in case something happened to him?"

"No. Nothing that I'm aware of." said Tsoulas.

"Why was I.A. so interested in him?" I asked. Tsoulas knew what I was really asking, and he did not try to fool the Iron Crowbar.

"I'm not supposed to say this out loud, but Cash is dead, so I'll tell you." he said quietly. "Our Internal Affairs has made a habit of closely watching everyone on the Force that was in the military, especially Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Cash did some kind of contract work over there, for six years. When they hired him back, I.A. told me to contact them if he showed any sign of PTSD at all. They also say he was burned out when he left here, but I never quite believed that. And to answer your next question before you ask it: no, he never showed any signs of PTSD nor any kind of unusual stress at all."

I nodded. "Okay. I appreciate your time." I said as I stood up. We shook hands and I left the office.

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

I went back to Cash's office and sat down behind his desk. His computer was booted up, and was asking for a log-in and password. The login space had been auto-filled with his name.

One of the things I'd 'researched' in the FBI offices the night before was how to penetrate the Westphalia Police Department's computers. I did not try to access anything in the way of files or important data, since they might detect the hack. I did enter a backdoor password to Cash's account.

I typed in that password, and I was in. As I was perusing the files, Pottsville Detective Shane O'Brady came into the office.

"Chester and Mason are reporting to the Chief right now," he said, "and Carrier went to see Captain Tsoulas."

"So what happened to Cash's home?" I asked.

"First the bad news." O'Brady said, bringing the chair around to my side of the desk, so he could see what I was doing on the computer. "It's a total loss, completely burnt out. There was an explosion, but it wasn't a large one, pretty much the laundry room. The Fire Department said the hot water heater might've been rigged to leak gas and then blow when the heater flamed up. The Crime Lab people found that the hot water in the kitchen sink had been turned on, which would facilitate the hot water heater being activated."

O'Brady continued: "But the big thing was that someone came in, probably at the same time they rigged the gas to leak, and poured chemicals all over the place. Mostly gasoline, but I had the idea that other flammable aromatics were also used. The Crime Lab is going to check on that for me."

"More bad news is that Internal Affairs has completely taken over the investigation," said O'Brady, "and they would not allow Chester nor Carrier, especially Carrier, to go into the taped off area at all. Cecil Mason escorted me to the front porch, but said I couldn't go inside for 'safety' reasons."

"He's probably right about that." I said agreeably.

"The good news is that the Crime Lab went through the house yesterday, after the news of Cash's death first came out." said O'Brady. "The did an extremely thorough job of searching the house, and found nothing. They videotaped everything they did, one camera for each room they searched, giving us hours of footage to watch if you want to find something."

"Good." I said. "And good work, observing that about the aromatics. That could be important. So how is it the arsonists got past the Police? Or was the house not being guarded, or at least watched?"

"That's a really good question, and I suspect they're a little bit embarrassed about it." said O'Brady. "They had a patrol car in the driveway, two Officers in the car, and they made their radio checks every two hours, right on time. The patrols were switched out at 4:00am. They heard the explosion and called in at 4:48am. Internal Affairs is looking into the Officers on watch, and would not tell me anything about them, or that." After a pause he asked "So, what are you doing?"

I put my finger over my lips in a 'hush' sign, then pointed at the ceiling, then said "While you were gone, I talked to Captain Tsoulas, Cash's boss. He basically confirmed what we already know." I began telling that story in 'sanitized' terms. In the meantime, my fingers were flying over the keyboard, checking the internet caches, checking where Cash had visited on the internal servers, and looking at the files.

As I talked, I took out of my pocket a plastic black box, 5" x 3" x 0.25"... it was a small external hard drive. I plugged it into the computer via the USB port, and downloaded some files.

*BRING!* *BRING!* *BRING!* *BRING!*

"That's mine." said O'Brady. He answered and said "Hold on, let me put you on speaker so Commander Troy can hear this, as well." He suited the deed to the word, and set the phone on the desk.

"This is Officer Wilson in Pottsville." said Officer Wilson. "Hello, Commander."

"Hello, Wilson." I replied. "Whaddya got for us?"

"We found Lt. Cash's car." said Wilson. "It was found at the end of a dead-end street in a residential neighborhood. There's an eight-foot ditch with a creek flowing along the bottom of it. On the other side is the backside of the Country Club's golf course. The license plate, VIN plate, and the sticker on the side of the driver's side door were all removed, the car was apparently thoroughly doused with gasoline, the gear put in neutral and the car pushed into the ditch. The perps then climbed up the other side, cut a hole in the fence to the golf course, set the car on fire, then got away through the fence and getting onto the golf course. The car burned completely; we couldn't tell it was silver anymore."

"Ask your Crime Lab to test for aromatics other than gasoline, too." I said. "So how did you identify the car as Cash's?"

"The CSIs found an engine number, and it was easy to trace it back." said Wilson.

"Excellent!" I said heartily. "So did you try to track the perps on the golf course?"

"Yes sir." said Wilson. "We brought our human scent dog. They left multiple sets of footprints, and they left a strong trail. Maybe they got some of the gasoline on themselves. The dog followed the scent until they got to the clubhouse parking lot, and then it disappeared. They must've gotten into a car."

"Is the entrance gated?" I asked.

"Yes sir." said Wilson. "But the exit opens automatically. We also checked to see if there was any camera footage. There was none on the residential street, and none on the golf course. The clubhouse has motion sensor cameras, but they were rendered inoperable."

"We also have some other information." said Wilson. "We searched for video footage of Lt. Cash's Camry coming in over the weekend. The Love's Truck Stop at the exit from the Interstate caught him getting off the exit and driving by early Saturday night. We couldn't see if he was alone in the car. We were able to pick him up on other cameras for several blocks, but then he turned into another residential neighborhood with no cameras, and we lost him."

"All right, thanks." I said. "That's very thorough work and a very good report. Let us know if your people find anything in the car."

"I agree, that was great work." said O'Brady. "Keep us posted." He then disconnected the call.

"You have some good people working for you." I said.

"I'll pass along the compliment." said O'Brady. "What next?"

"Why don't we invite Tom Carrier out to lunch?" I said.

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

2:00pm, Monday, March 18th. WPD Senior Detective Tom Carrier said that the best lunch place this side of the North River (that separates Westphalia and Eastphalia) was the Sweet Baby Jane's home cooking diner. And he was right, it was good food.

We found a table in the 'sunroom' area near the back, where we could talk privately, as not so many people were there at this particular hour of the day. I also had my ink-pen bug killer on, just in case.

"Thanks for the lunch." Carrier said as we ate. "Did you really stop a nuke from going off?"

"You have not heard me say a word about that." I said. "All of that is still classified, and I can't speak of it."

"But you're not saying 'no'." said Carrier. "Damn, that's great if you did, but I understand that you can't speak of it. And obviously you wanted to get me out of Headquarters to talk."

"And away from the I.A. bugs in Cash's office." I said. "And I know you know about those."

"How do you know that?" asked O'Brady.

"Detective Carrier never once looked up at the light fixture, where the bugs are." I said, then addressed Carrier. "You made a point to look at me the whole time, all but playing that 'Blink' game with me. And you were careful not to answer with any information that they might want to hear."

"Yeah." said Carrier. "I'm not sure what it is, but Mason is as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs."

"The way he's handled the case, so far?" asked O'Brady. "It's been anything but stellar."

"There are some 'strangenesses', there." I said, then to Carrier: "So let's go over it again. Cash never mentioned what he was working on?"

"Not to me." said Carrier. "And from what I've gathered, not to anyone else, either."

"And you've worked well for him for the last four years?" I asked.

"Nearly four." said Carrier. "It'll be a full four years in June that he came back from Iraq. And yeah, he really upped our game in Homicide. Before that, there was a... well, some pretty low morale. We'd been stymied in several cases, and Vice was even worse: three Confidential Informants were outed and murdered."

"After he came back, did he work on anything big?" I asked.

"No." said Carrier. "He didn't take a case himself for a couple of years, just delegated them to us, and helped with insight and direction if he had any."

"Did Internal Affairs ask you to inform them if you saw anything strange in Cash? Like PTSD?" I asked.

"Ah yes, now you ask the hard questions, the ones I don't really want to answer." said Carrier. After a pause he said "Look, yesterday morning I.A. called me into Headquarters. They grilled me for over two hours, and didn't even have the common courtesy to buy me a lunch like you guys have. They were all over me, demanding to know why I didn't tell them Cash was acting strangely like they'd told me to do, and what did Cash tell me about what he was doing in Pottsville."

"I didn't even know he was dead at that time." said Carrier. "I told them that I'd seen nothing strange from him, and that he'd said nothing about any case he was working on in Pottsville or anywhere else. All we talked about was the connection between the Marcie Harper gang and the murders here in Westphalia. And every time I said it, the I.A. bastards just yelled at me more and more. I finally said that if they didn't believe me, I wanted a Union Rep and a lawyer, and at that point they just shut it down."

"It took you two hours to do that?" I asked.

"I didn't want to seem uncooperative." said Carrier. "I knew something was going on, and I answered with the truth and to the best of my ability, but when they started just repeating themselves over and over as if they didn't believe me, I got tired of it."

"I don't blame you." I said.

"There's one more thing I didn't tell them, that I'll tell you." said Carrier. "It was the first thing I said when I came into Cash's office: he wanted to be like you, the Iron Crowbar. He was envious of your success, but not in a way where he hated you. But he lamented in the past that before you came along, he did the same things but never got the reputation you have."

"Is that why he was reading my case files so much?" I asked.

"Yeah." said Carrier. "He studied your cases up one side and down the other, and a lot of what he was teaching us, he admitted that it came from studying you. And that Marcie Harper drug bust? He about fell out of his chair when all that came out. He could not understand how you found that code in those videos."

"Truth is, I didn't." I said. "A better Detective than me found it, and brought it to my attention. He didn't have any children, did he?"

"Er, no." said Carrier, not understanding. "Not that I know of."

"But he studied the case, found a connection between that and two murders, so that's good, isn't it?" I asked.

"Sure, if we can bring it home to a successful prosecution." said Carrier. "But what I'm getting at, which I didn't tell I.A., is that after that Harper bust, Cash started acting a little strange. Not PTSD strange, but like he was a young Detective again. I think he may have gotten a thread to some case, a big case, and he wanted to solve it himself and get the accolades, and then he'd retire. He never mentioned that, it's just what I've figured out as I've thought about it for the last couple of days."

"Okay, thanks for telling me that." I said. "Let's get you back to your Headquarters before Mason gets his tail under one of those rocking chairs..."

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

We went inside WPD Headquarters and to the office of Chief Engle. I.A. Lieutenant Cecil Mason was also in the office.

"We very much appreciate your generous hospitality and help in this case." I said. "I think the next steps for Detective O'Brady and myself lie in Pottsville."

"We appreciate your taking the time to look into this." said the Chief. "Anything you can tell us at this point?"

"Just this." I said. "I know Internal Affairs has to do their jobs, and you should investigate. But not with the premise that Lieutenant Cash was a bad guy in any way. I think he was working on a case that may be bigger than he realized. I think he was betrayed. And... I think he died honorably, and in the line of duty."

"How do you know that?" asked Lt. Mason.

"It is not for me to tell you how to do your job, Lieutenant Mason." I said. "But I did come into it with fresh eyes, and without the premise that Cash was dirty or doing something wrong."

I handed the Chief my card. "Please call me if you get something new." I said. "And I'll let you know when I bust the murderer. And I am going to bust the son of a bitch."

I then added under my breath: "It's personal..."

Part 4 - The Road Home

I followed O'Brady down the Interstate towards Pottsville. We took the first exit after leaving Westphalia's county, and pulled in to the nearest service station. A Pottsville Police cruiser was parked there. I parked next to it, O'Brady on the other side.

"Okay, Wilson," O'Brady said to the Officer that had gotten out of the passenger seat, "if you get so much as a scratch on my car, I'll borrow Commander Troy's crowbar and beat you down silly with it." I chuckled as I checked my SBI SUV for bugs or tracking devices. Yeah, I'm paranoid: Trent and Quint were still out there, somewhere. But there were no devices.

O'Brady got in the SUV with me and we left. The Pottsville Officers drove their cars to the Interstate, and turned south for Pottsville. I went the other way, to the U.S. Highway that paralleled the Interstate, but did not go into Westphalia's county.

"Okay, what have you got?" asked O'Brady. "How did you know Cash was studying you?"

"His internet access, both the web and the private URLs the Police can use to access each other's data, which the FBI uses, also." I said. "Cash had been studying my cases, as Carrier said, and Cash really took an interest in the Harper bust. I feel bad for him if he was envious; a five-year-old broke that one open."

"And you're sure he's good, and not dirty?" asked O'Brady. "Cecil Mason's head about exploded when you said all that."

"He's about to get embarrassed." I replied sourly. "The bugaboo about this case for me has been why Cash left when he did, and for what reason; and why he returned when he did, and for what reason. I.A. has had a bee in their bonnet about him from the get-go, especially since he returned from Iraq. But the WPD did hire him back, and as Lieutenant, and put him in charge of their most important Detective group. Contradictions abound, my friend. Contradictions abound."

"And I know what you think about those." O'Brady said. "So, you told them we're going to Pottsville, then you have me get Wilson to drive my car back there while you and I drive to the City. What's there?"

"The FBI." I said. "And their resources. I found some files on Cash's computer. I didn't want to look at them there, so I just downloaded a bunch, and I'll look at them on my computer when we get up there."

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

Shane O'Brady got to use his SBI badge and ID for the first time, to gain access to the FBI offices in the Federal Building. I took him to the the big office and cubicles of Team Lazarus, where proper introductions were made. I noticed Sandra Speer's eyes light up a bit at the sight of the tall, dark and handsome Irishman O'Brady.

We then went to Jack Muscone's office right down the hallway and on the other side. He now had the corner office as the Special Agent In Charge for this region. He'd just moved in today, as well.

"Nice new office." I said. "How come I don't have a corner office like this?"

"Because you turned one down when they offered you the Police Chief job." said Muscone with a twinkle in his beady black eyes. "Now don't start complaining like Tanya used to."

"You know Shane O'Brady?" I asked. He and Muscone shook hands. "If Tanya saw the size of his office, she'd be aghast." We explained about small offices and Tanya's dislike of them.

"Seriously," said Muscone, "she is very grateful for the office she has... and what it represents." I nodded. Muscone then said "What can I do for you guys?"

I brought Jack up to speed on the investigation, then said "I'd like to borrow a secure connection again, check out these files I downloaded."

"Sure." said Muscone. "Use my old office again. And stop by before you leave, if I'm still here."

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

I downloaded the files from the external hard drive, and my laptop thoroughly checked them for viruses. Finding them to be safe, I began examining them.

Just then, FBI Special Agent Lindy Linares came in, with two large paper cups full of coffee. "Mind if I watch?" she asked.