Scavenger Hunt Ch. 03

This story is part of an ongoing series. The chronological order of my stories is listed in WifeWatchman's biography.

Feedback and constructive criticism is very much appreciated, and I encourage feedback for ideas.

This story contains graphic scenes, language and actions that might be extremely offensive to some people. These scenes, words and actions are used only for the literary purposes of this story. The author does not condone murder, racism, racial language, violence, rape or violence against women, and any depictions of any of these in this story should not be construed as acceptance of the above.

There may or may not be discussion of political issues in my stories. If you are a Snowflake that feels you need to be protected from any mention of politics, then click the Back button now, and never attempt to read any of my stories ever again. You've been warned.

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Part 8 - In Black And White

"They're dead?" Muscone gasped.

"Yes." I said. I filled him in on what we'd found in Donnan County, including the condition of the bodies. "I think the shotgun blasts and cutting off the hands was to prevent identification, which is why we really need any DNA you can get."

"I'm on it." said Muscone. "And listen up, Dog. I thought you were calling because you heard what your Police Force did tonight."

"What's that?" I asked.

"They busted another Toyota Gang robbery in progress..."

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

6:00am, Saturday, October 9th. Lieutenant Shane O'Brady and I came into Town & County 1st Precinct Headquarters and County Jail. It was a beehive of activity.

We'd made sure the bodies were in cold storage, then left for home. Kendell Ramsey wrote up his autopsy report on his iPad, then dozed off. I filled Shane O'Brady in on what happened in Apple Grove involving the two couples (Author's note: 'Reunion Fever', particularly Ch. 03-05.), then he looked at video of the 'Hotel' cell we'd arrested the week before while I burned the blue lightbar and drove at 'Cindy Ross' rates of speed through Midtown, Hamilton County, and Coltrane County to get home.

I went to the 1st Precinct Conference Room. Captain Claire Michaels was at the far end of the table, Lieutenant Christopher Purvis to her left, and Corporal Penny Scott to his left, and they were all typing away on laptops. Also in the room was Lt. Commander Teresa Croyle, to Claire's right, also typing on a laptop.

When Teresa turned her head and looked over her right shoulder to see me come in, she began standing. "Carry on, stay seated." I said, which caused the others to (finally) look up and see their Police Commander in their midst. "So! What's going on?... besides successfully arresting four more perps in a Toyota, but not informing your friendly neighborhood Police Commander about it?"

The joviality in my voice fooled no one present. But despite my eyes being affixed upon Claire Michaels, only Teresa stepped up, and said "That's my fault sir. I have no excuse."

"Sure you do." I said, rescuing her as I pulled out the chair to her right and sat down. I motioned for O'Brady to sit down on my other side as I continued: "You thought I was five hours away on another case, and there was nothing I could do anyway, not unlike last week when I was in Apple Grove. And by rights we would still be down there, but we found out some verrry interesting stuff, and then I heard about this bust. So here we are. Captain Michaels, are you ready to brief me on all this?"

Captain Michaels said "Sir, if you'll give us one more hour to put things together, and also for me to ask the Chief if he wants to come in and hear it, we'll have a good bit for you."

"Okay, then." I said, looking at my wristwatch. "Be ready at 7:00am. In the meantime, I'll call the Chief and Sheriff. Commander Croyle, have y'all had breakfast yet?"

"No sir." Teresa replied.

"I'll order some coffee and breakfast sandwiches, then." I said as I got up. "Commander Croyle, you're with me..."

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

"Do not dare even attempt to apologize for not calling me." I said to Teresa as we walked to the County Jail Monitor Room. Shane O'Brady had taken the opportunity to go to the potty, then to the cafeteria for some coffee as he checked in with the Pottsville PD. I continued: "That was meant for Captain Michaels, and she will be hearing more about it."

"She did do very well running the operation that netted us this new batch of perps." Teresa said. "And I do need to call Rudistan and ask what nickname he wants to give these new guys." I chuckled at that, then Teresa asked with obvious curiosity: "If I may ask, sir, what happened in Donnan County?"

I reiterated what we'd discovered and learned, as well as my thesis on who they were. Teresa said "Ohhh, Jack Muscone must've told you about tonight's bust."

"Yes, he did." I said. "He thought I was calling him about it, not the Apple Grove Four."

When we went into the Monitor Room, which was being manned by a Deputy Sheriff, I saw the cameras that were steadily trained on the four perps in isolation in their small holding cells.

"They're all black." I said.

"Not much gets past you, sir." Teresa said. "With one Hispanic cell and one Black cell, the Toyota Gang is obviously committed to racial diversity."

That struck me, and I felt myself blink hard. "You may be more accurately correct than either of us realize." I said. "They're all young-looking, too. I can't wait to hear their stories. Did they invoke?"

"They all asked for lawyers immediately." Teresa replied. "We just put them in cells for the night, didn't try to speak with them at all..."

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

7:00am, Saturday, October 9th. Chief Moynahan and Sheriff Griswold joined us in the 1st Precinct Conference Room. The Chief sat at the end of the table opposite Captain Michaels, and the Sheriff to his right, next to Corporal Penny Scott. Also in the room were Lieutenant Teddy Parker, sitting between Penny and Claire.

Commander Tanya Muscone had driven in and parked herself between me and the Chief. Detective Joan Laurer was sitting next to Lieutenant Shane O'Brady, away from the crowded table. Lieutenant Micah Rudistan was guarding the coffeepots near the back of the room, and Detective Sergeant Julia Rodriguez sat between him and Shane.

Lieutenant Christopher Purvis was no longer in the room. "I sent him home for a few hours sleep." said Captain Michaels. "He'll come back in, to Police Headquarters, at noon. At that time I'll be sending Corporal Scott home."

"He's missing a good free breakfast, then." I said as I distributed wrapped breakfast sandwiches to everyone, and left the remaining several in the box in the middle of the table. We'd all long since poured coffee for ourselves.

"Okay, what happened?" I asked. Claire called on Parker.

Teddy Parker: "Like last week, sir, we ran analytics to determine what locations were most likely to be hit. The most interesting thing is that Intel and Lt. Myron Milton's I.T. Department ran algorithms, which old-timers like me call 'studies', to see if anything besides convenience stores might be targets. And the Smith-Morra Pharmacy Jewelry Store came up."

"Smith-Morra?" I almost gasped.

Teresa said "Yes sir, same as the old Smith-Morra Pharmacy. Their pharmacy business has barely hung on since our last case involving that business." (Author's note: 'The Medical Murder Mystery'.) "So they greatly expanded their jewelry business, which has thrived."

"Cool beans." I said. "Was there any particular piece of intel that led our analytics to that particular location?"

"Yes sir." said Lieutenant Rudistan from behind us. "There'd been some C.I. chatter that several jewelry stores were being cased as possible targets for a big hit. And this 'Chairborne-qualified' Sergeant Rodriguez independently confirmed that the Smith-Morra store was becoming a prime target, because they brought in a wholesale lot of loose diamonds, emeralds, and rubies, which they were going to cut and mount for the Holiday Season."

I gave Airborne-qualified Julia Rodriguez a thumbs up as some of the others, including the Chief, chuckled at Rudistan's little dig at her. Claire Michaels was not amused. "Lieutenant Parker, keep going." she said with asperity.

Parker: "Yes ma'am. Last night we saw the ubiquitous Federal Government vans blatantly staking out the convenience stores our analytics suggested might be hit. We did not deploy our own obvious vans like we did last week, but instead we diverted our assets watching those places to the jewelry stores around Town."

Parker: "They hit Smith-Morra just before midnight. It was very professionally done, too. They disabled the alarm very efficiently. They knew where everything was and went right to it. They had some seriously hi-tech equipment to crack the safe and get the loose, large-carat diamonds and other stones inside it, which were valued at well over $10 million total. They also hit the very-well-hidden safe in another part of the store, and took out nearly $40,000 in cash."

"That ain't convenience store money!" said Joan Laurer, generating laughs.

"No, it's not." I said.

Parker: "The problem for them was that when they got back to their Toyota Camry in the back alley, they found themselves ambushed by a lot of Police Officers with very bad attitudes... except for Rudistan, of course; he never has a bad attitude."

Everyone except Claire laughed, and Parker went on: "The perps gave up without a fight, but they immediately began saying 'lawyer', 'lawyer'. And they asked for attorneys after we ran them through Booking, so we just put them in holding cells, away from each other."

I said. "That's awesome. You guys did an outstanding job. Obviously, I need to plan more trips far away from here." There was polite laughter at that.

"That brings up a good point." said Deputy Chief Tanya Muscone. "Somebody planned a reason for you to be on that trip, so you would be away from here, Don. And that connects those murders to these Toyota Gang robberies---"

"Hold on." I said, holding up my hand. "Let's not skip ahead. Okay, our guys busted the perps. They had the loot and the cash on them?"

"Yes sir." said Teddy Parker.

"But they didn't touch the drugs in the pharmacy?" I asked.

"No sir. Not even a tube of 'Preparation H'." said Lt. Rudistan with great joviality. Laughter ensued.

Teddy Parker said "They did have cameras on them very similar to our Officer-cams. They also had burner cellphones in the vehicle, on mounts just like the first gang's car had. We got all four of them, our techs unlocked them, and gave the ID data to the FBI to process for us. Our CSIs are going over the vehicle now, and it appears to have the same radio transmission setup as the first Camry we impounded."

"Whoa." Tanya said. "Our techs, TCPD techs, unlocked the phones?"

I said "Who did you think unlocked them?"

"The FBI." Tanya said.

"No, it was our guys." I replied, looking right at her. "And we won't say any more about that, especially not to any Federal Agents... including our various spouses. Is that clear?"

Tanya gave me a decidedly 'not perky' look, so Chief Moynahan looked right at Tanya and said "Consider that an order, Commander Musconnne... from meeeee."

"Yes sir." Tanya said dispiritedly.

"Okay," I said, "tell me about these well-trained, highly prepared perps."

Claire Michaels took it over, and brought up an image on the single monitor on the wall behind her. An image of a tall, slender, dark-skinned black man came up. He was wearing 'Mythbusters' black plastic glasses, and had a bright smile showing a lot of perfectly straight teeth.

"This is Roger Earnest." Claire said. "Age 26. Graduated Cum Laude in Business Administration from City University. Dropped out of Grad School here at the University, for unknown reasons. Got a job with WassermanWarren, the powerhouse accounting firm of the big companies like BigBenefitInsurance and WorldBankTrust. But he abruptly left that job late last year, again no reason given. He was the driver of the Toyota."

A photo of a very young looking black man with lighter skin than Roger Ernest's showed on the monitor. Claire said: "Next is Dwayne Heywood, a.k.a. 'Heywood J.', which allegedly is short for 'Heywood Jablowme'. He played basketball for Booker T. Washington High School in the southern part of Town, lettering all four years of high school. He enlisted in the Army after graduating, and served four years on active duty in the 10th Mountain Division. He received a medical discharge, honorable, from active duty. Since then he's done odd jobs, worked at Kroger, at coffee shops and such."

"Tenth Mountain." I said amusedly. "When I went through Airborne School, a whole unit of them was in my class, like the way Sergeant Rodriguez's unit went through at once. For three weeks, all I heard was "Moun-tain! Moun-tain!" But they were great guys, highly motivated and dedicated. Okay, I've interrupted you. Keep going."

A photo of a heavyset, young, mid-dark-skinned black man was shown. Claire said "This is Fred Spencer. He's 28. He's big, but agile. He got his degree in Theater from Midtown College, and toured the Midwest with a small theater company for four years. He then dropped completely off the grid, and has been a ghost for two years, until he popped up last night."

A photo of a young woman with skin the same color as Roger Earnest was shown as Claire said "This is Danielle 'Dee' Stubbs, age 27. Yes, she's the adopted daughter of the 'Stubbs' in Stubbs & Wheaton Venture Capital, LLC. She also attended City University, where she made the Dean's List every semester and graduated with a GPA of 3.8 in Interdisciplinary Studies, consisting of Political Science, Economics, and Sociology, which took five years to complete. She did 1099 contract work for both Stubbs & Wheaton and WassermanWarren until last year, when she, too, went off the grid completely... until last night."

"There's that word again." I said. "Stubbs. That's been the common link throughout these cases."

Claire: "Yes sir. We identified all four through facial recognition and their fingerprints. Earnest had a drivers license that is in the system, has his photograph, but the name 'Tim Black'. The others had no ID on them, though their DMV photos came up after we got their data, and all four of the addresses on their drivers licenses were in various parts of our Town here."

Claire: "However, the addresses on their drivers licenses did not match up with their names when we ran the addresses independently, so we held off asking for warrants until we can verify who really lives at those addresses. Commander Croyle had the Precincts send Officers in unmarked cars to watch the locations."

I said "That's good, and checking the addresses may have saved us some embarrassment. Excellent job, there. Having said that, we need to be more proactive. I need Teddy and Theo to send their four MCD Detectives, one per location, with an experienced Officer from the Precinct in plainclothes, to knock on those doors."

Me: "If someone is there, they should check their IDs, then talk to them and see if they know our perps, here. If anything gets our people's Spidey-senses going, they should invite them to Headquarters for a conversation with me. If no one is there, call in for a warrant to search the location, saying that the perp's drivers license has that address. Do the search gently; don't tear up the places."

Teddy Parker was getting up, but I said: "And Teddy... neither you nor Theo nor any Lieutenant-or-above can go with them. You stay here."

Teddy got it. He turned to Julia Rodriguez and said "Detective Sergeant, take the lead on that." Julia nodded as she and Joan Laurer got up and exited the room. I gave Teddy a thumbs-up; he had passed my quick little test.

"Okay, do we have any cellphone data?" I asked.

"Ohhh, yes we do." Corporal Penny Scott said enthusiastically. "Roger Earnest's ID is 'SHBravo1'. Dwayne Heywood is 'SHBravo2'. Fred Spencer is 'SHBravo3'. And Dee Stubbs is 'SHBravo4'. Same IDs on Hotmail accounts found in the burner phones. And just like the other group, these phones communicated only with each other and a fifth ID, which is 'SHLimaB'."

Penny: "Seeing that 'Bravo' is the military phonetic alphabet for 'B', like 'Hotel' is for 'H', I began checking for email addresses with the letters 'Alpha' through 'Zulu', the military phonetic alphabet, and also the addresses 'SHLima' with A, B, C, and so on. Two other sets of addresses came up as valid: 'SHAlpha' 1-4, and 'SHWhiskey' 1-4. And 'SHLimaA' and 'SHLimaW' are valid. No other names are."

"That is excellent work. Just excellent." I said. "I am really going to have to schedule more vacations if y'all keep this stuff up. Yes, we definitely have some patterns here. So we have 'A', 'B', 'H', and 'W'."

I turned to Teresa and said "Remember what we were talking about a while ago? Well, the first group were designated 'H' and were all Hispanics, and last night's group are 'B' and are all Black. So maybe 'A' is for 'Asian' and 'W' is 'White'?"

"It fits the data, Crowbar." Sheriff Griswold growled, his mustaches twitching merrily.

"With all due respect, sir," Claire Michaels said, "do we have anything else to suggest that ethnicity is the issue with these groups?"

"Yes we do." I said. "We have a connection between the the two gangs we've caught and Stubbs & Wheaton. And there's another connection between Stubbs & Wheaton and four white people who live in this area... well, I should say 'lived' if my hunch is true that the four dead people in Donnan County are indeed the 'Apple Grove Four', who may have been conducting industrial espionage against BOW Enterprises, and who may have participated in the stabbing of a man last weekend."

"But to what end, sir?" Claire asked.

"That's what we need to find out." I said. "And that's why I asked for someone to look back and see if any strange crimes were occurring while these gangs were hitting convenience stores. Do we have anything on that?"

Penny Scott said "I know Lieutenant Purvis was digging deep on that, sir, and coordinating with Lieutenant Graham in Southport and Detective Bell in Midtown. But I don't know what they found, if anything."

I said "But Lieutenant Purvis is not here. He was sent home despite this important meeting taking place now." It was a clear and very public rebuke of Claire Michaels, and she and everyone else were well aware of it.

"Sir," said Teresa, "do you think there's anything especially important about the fact that this jewelry heist was far and away the biggest thing any of the Toyota Gangs have attempted thus far?"

I said "I agree that it was big, but we don't know yet if it's the biggest. But that is a good point."

Shane O'Brady said "If I may..." I nodded, and he said "It may have just been that the perps knew the jewelry store was stocking up for Christmas. But it may also have been a different issue... when the H-gang was caught, the B-gang moved on in to take those jewels and cash before all the gangs, however many there are, shut down, disbanded, and disappeared entirely."

"Could be." I nodded. "Could well be."

Sheriff Griswold said "And if you're right that those four dead people are the White gang in this, that would increase the others's desire to move quickly even more... if they knew the four were dead, of course."

*KNOCK!* *KNOCK!* *KNOCK!* *KNOCK!*

The door opened to reveal the Duty Desk Officer. He said "Everyone, the lawyers for the four jewelry store robbers are here..."

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

"Same four lawyers." I said as we watched the lawyers interview their clients in the three Interrogation Rooms, with Dee Stubbs in what was known as the 'Confessional' room. "Roger Earnest has Edward N. Parker, Fred Spencer has Michael Bertram, Dee Stubbs has Chip Blake, and poor Dwayne Heywood drew the short straw and got Max Chambliss."