Sicilian Murder

by Alec Peche

  Jill didn't add the word 'yet' to her sentence.

  Marie shook hands with Sara Cavallaro and then the policewoman directed them inside the University of Catania campus. Soon they were entering a building made of stone and marble looking several centuries old. Jill loved the interior of the old building. They passed a library filled with bone artifacts and texts arriving at a now empty student lecture hall. Jill posited the forensic expert must also be on the faculty of the University.

  Cavallaro performed introductions, “This is Associate Professor Dr. Antonella Coli. She's our expert that we consult with in any difficult case,” then she introduced Jill's team to the prosecutor and the professor.

  Pubblico Ministero Lombardo said, “Dr. Quint, we have brought Dr. Coli into this case, not because we doubt your findings, but rather because she will understand how to use your findings in the Italian justice system.”

  “Okay. What would you like to know?”

  Dr. Coli and Dr. Quint proceeded into a technical discussion of Jill's autopsy findings, her training, as well as what she found at the scene in the Mount Etna crater. The others just listened to the two doctors speak of pathology, toxicology, and falling bodies. They reviewed the blood results from Jill's Swiss lab. Dr. Coli nodded, listening.

  At the end of Jill's explanation Coli said to Lombardo, “Mr. Chen was lucky to have Dr. Quint do his autopsy. As she's an expert in the United States, I believe we can use her autopsy results. However, I would recommend that new blood work be extracted from Mr. Chen's remains and sent to the toxicology lab in Rome. I'm sure we can work out a chain of custody documentation to follow the sample from the United States back to Italy, no?”

  Tenete Rosso said, “Yes we have spoken with the police in his hometown and we have agreed in principle to a chain of custody.”

  Lombardo asked, “Dr. Coli is there any other evidence we should collect that you haven't seen here?”

  Coli asked Jill to review the data once again and ten minutes later she said to Lombardo, “No, she's got photographs of the scene and the autopsy findings and I can't think of anything else to add. It's very complete.”

  Jill sensed they were coming to an end of the meeting with the pathology professor and she was looking for an opening to give the Italian officials, Randy Chen's phone. First though she wanted to see if she could influence their next steps.

  “So what are the next steps in this investigation for you?” She clearly addressed the 'you' to any of the three justice system representatives who might answer her question.

  “We have reasonable proof that Mr. Chen was murdered, but we don't know where he was murdered, who did it, or why. So I would say our next steps are to find the answers to those questions,” Lombardo said.

  “How?” Jill thought she was stepping over the line asking the question, but she didn't care. They could choose to say, 'none of her business', or they might give her some honest answers.

  “I don't wish to take up any more of Dr. Coli's time, perhaps we can step outside and discuss the answers to your question.”

  Jill nodded and then as she was about to leave, Dr. Coli asked, “Dr. Quint, would you have time to present your case to my students while you're in Sicily? It would be an excellent learning opportunity for my students in forensics.”

  “Probably, but I don't speak Italian. Would they understand my lecture in English?”

  The professor nodded and they made arrangements for Jill to do the lecture.

  Lombardo directed them outside to a quiet courtyard saying, “Let us talk a while longer. My office is in Palermo and so it would be inconvenient to hold a meeting there for you and your team Dr. Quint.”

  Jill nodded and they took their seats on benches. Angela and Marie hadn't said anything so far and were both quietly watching the proceedings.

  “Dr. Quint, you asked us how we are proceeding and it would not be a practice in the Italian justice system to tell you, a relative stranger with no official role in the case from our point of view. However, your assistance thus far has helped us identify a murder that would have gone undetected. Sicily has a murderer in our community that we need to apprehend and sentence. So I would ask my esteemed colleagues to tell you of their next steps. I suspect you have your own next steps and it wouldn't do for you to be tripping over us.”

  “We will be contacting Mr. Chen's daughter to gain access to his cell phone records. We'll be looking for information on who he spoke with. We are under the assumption that this was not a random act of murder as his belongings contained his wallet with cash in it. Also, you asked a good question about how his body would have been transported to the crater during the brief snowstorm that preceded his discovery and so we will look into this,” Cavallaro said. “What are you and your team working on at the moment?”

  One good turn deserved another. Jill briefly debated on what to say about the phone. She opened her purse and pulled out the phone.

  “Melissa Chen mailed this to me just before she left the country yesterday,” passing the phone over.

  “Dr. Quint, I will caution you that it is a criminal offense to interfere in an investigation in Italy by withholding evidence,” Lombardo said, clearly angered at the cavalier mention of the cellphone.

  “Ah, but you had not contacted me at the time that the cell phone came into my possession that there was actually a crime committed in Italy. In fact, I was notified this morning when the meeting was set up that you were opening an official inquiry. I believe you had no faith in my findings until Dr. Coli verified my conclusions. That meeting is at an end, and I have given you the phone. There is no interference on my part,” Jill replied not willing to be intimidated by the prosecutor.

  Russo and Cavallaro had both tried to open the phone, but failed while Jill and Lombardo were exchanging words.

  “The phone is locked. Did the victim's daughter give you the passcode?”

  “No, she doesn't know it.”

  Cavallaro sighed and said, “We will have to send it to our crime lab in Rome to see if they can unlock the phone.”

  “Are they successful at unlocking phones in your criminal cases?”

  “I don't know. It's never come up before.”

  “Will you be able to get GPS records from the telecom company as to where the phone pinged Italian cellular towers?” Jill asked.

  Cavallaro looked to the prosecutor for an answer as she hadn't tried to do that in her career before.

  “Yes,” was the abrupt response from the prosecutor and Jill could see he was still suspicious of them. Of course Jill was suspicious of them being able to solve the case on their own.

  “What are your next steps Dr. Quint?” Rosso asked.

  “We were going to use our police contacts in Mr. Chen's hometown to gain access to telecom records. We are also exploring a series of towns that Mr. Chen was rumored to be visiting while here in Sicily. There are seven of them and so this will keep us busy. Marie is also exploring Mr. Chen on social media to see if there are any clues there,” Jill knew she was risking rebuke from the Italians, and so she added. “Also, I have a copy of the phone's contents and all of my team are exploring his activities to establish a timeline on the days leading up to his death.”

  She observed Lombardo getting red in the face again and he said, “I asked you not to interfere in this case. You are withholding evidence by not giving us the passcode!”

  “Actually I don't know the passcode. I used a computer expert outside of Italy to unlock the phone. I copied its contents and the phone locked. I don't know the passcode. I can share our copy of the phone, but you only have my word that the contents are from his phone. It seems that you need your own expert to unlock the phone.”

  Cavallaro tried to play peacemaker by saying, “I would appreciate a copy of the information you state is from Mr. Chen's phone. While our experts unlock the phone, we'll begin exploring the contents as well.”

  Jill nodded and made arrangements with Cavallaro to send her the
information.

  Rosso asked about the towns.

  “You mentioned some towns that Mr. Chen wanted to visit. What are those towns and do you know why he wanted to visit them?”

  “His daughter mentioned that it was a town with Sicily in its name. When we looked up those towns, it turns out that there are likely six of them to visit. A seventh town is referred to by a different name so we crossed that one off his list as well as an eighth town where it snowed.”

  “Do you have any thoughts as to why he would visit any of these towns?”

  “Yes,” Marie said. “Mr. Chen has been a producer of natural supplements for going on thirty years and he thought he found a new substance here on the island. His family and colleagues did not know the name of whatever plant he was pursuing, nor did they know what the plant might be used for; only that the plant was abundant on Sicily but rarely found elsewhere.”

  “Okay, maybe we'll go back to the University to see what a plant expert could tell us about a rare plant on this island. Who else wanted this plant?” Rosso asked.

  “If we knew more about the plant, then we might have a motive, but we haven't figured that out yet.”

  “That information isn't on his phone?” asked Lombardo.

  “It may be, but we hadn't discovered it before we came over here to see you,” Marie said.

  Soon the group broke up to go their separate ways, with Jill and her team discussing their conversation with the three Italians all the way back to their apartment.

  Chapter 9

  The three Italians watched the Americans leave the courtyard. Once they were sure they were out hearing range, he said, “They are as annoying as hell, but I do have to say that she has seen things that we missed and I have no doubt in my mind that this is a murder case,” Cavallaro said.

  “I'm also in the unhappy position of agreeing with you,” Rosso said.

  “You two sound like you're on her side,” Lombardo said.

  “Well sir, they have accelerated progress in this case which I appreciate, and we had better get to work if we want to get out in front of them. Let's discuss how the body got up to the crater. I think that's the easier thing to track rather than the cell phone contents,” Cavallaro said.

  “Yes. I believe it would have taken some kind of off-road vehicle. I don't think you get a dead body up the mountain even if you placed it in a motorcycle sidecar. When we rode up the mountain yesterday, that vehicle really rocked from side to side and some of those boulders required a high clearance. Let's check with the company to see if all of their cars can be accounted for at the time that Mr. Chen was transported to the crater. Let's also check with them to see if they have seen or know of other cars that can make that trek.”

  “What should we do with the phone?”

  “By law, the phone company must unlock it for us, but we'll let Rome take care of that. We'll need it for the eventual court case to stack evidence. In the meantime, we should receive a copy soon of the phone's contents. Let's discuss what we should do with that information. We all have sophisticated phones that collect all kinds of information on our activities, internet searches, apps used, etc. I doubt that it will be as easy as seeing an appointment with his killer the day of Mr. Chen's murder. We also don't have a motive yet, and while we would normally look at the family first – I feel that since they called in this group of consultants to prove it was a murder, that mostly rules them out. Let's check the alibis and movements of family members. Hopefully that will be a short investigation as only the daughter was here in Sicily. I would like to understand his company better so we may understand if a motive comes from a business rival. Let's hope that our friends in any of the Cosa Nostra family are not behind this murder,” Lombardo said.

  “Yes. If that happens, we will have to provide protection for those women if they are still in Sicily. Their level of danger goes down dramatically if they leave Sicily, perhaps we can work on encouraging them to leave,” Rosso said.

  “We should also check their credentials. We only have her word that she is a doctor of some repute in the United States. Let's see if we can check some references. We don't want her or her team interfering with a case that will go to trial in the future. I want to make sure she hasn't done that in the past. I'll take on that assignment while you work on transportation and phone data. What else should we be looking at?” Lombardo asked rubbing his head. This was turning into one of the most complex cases he'd overseen in years as a career prosecutor.

  “Dr. Quint mentioned that she was researching cities that Mr. Chen might have visited on the morning of his death. We'll add those to our list down the road. The list of cities is vague and we would have to rely on the citizens to have noticed Mr. Chen's presence. I think we will do better if we look at credit card purchases to see if he visited. We could ask the daughter for that information, but he may have kept pass-codes on his phone to access bank accounts and so that will get us the information faster. Will that method of obtaining data interfere with your court proceedings, sir?” Cavallaro asked.

  “I think this case is going to set a new precedent in our system. I will need to consult with another judge to assure myself that we are making the correct decisions.”

  “I think we need more resources for this case. Specifically, some younger officers to track the activity on the phone. I say younger officers as I expect them to use their phones better than us three senior officers of the justice systems,” Rosso advised.

  “I agree,” Cavallaro said.

  “Yes, I believe we must set up an inquiry and bring additional help from each of our departments to this case, if for no other reason than to check that we are researching this case in accordance with the law. Let's regroup later this afternoon and every afternoon for the foreseeable future. I will find meeting space in Catania as this seems to be the hub of the case. We'll let our offices in Palermo know that we will be in the area for a while. Let's see if we can get a jump-start on those Americans!”

  The three of them nodded and departed the courtyard with heads full of a massive to-do list and the excitement of a difficult case to solve.

  Chapter 10

  “So what do you think of the Italians so far?” Angela asked.

  “They seem competent in the laws of their country which I know to be different from other international cases. I like that they immediately used a countrywoman to verify my work. With Mr. Chen about to be buried, I considered that to be the most immediate thing to do in the near future and they recognized that, so kudos for them.”

  “But?” Marie said.

  “They wasted hours before they contacted us in the first place and of course I was underwhelmed that no one asked the questions at the crater when Mr. Chen was first located there. You would have thought there would have been at least some investigation. I was also surprised that they didn't contact Melissa Chen for the phone. I think they need to add resources, so we'll see if they do. That will tell me they understand the complexity of this case. Then again they may easily locate the vehicle that took Mr. Chen's body to the crater, and then the case might be solved shortly.”

  “So our next steps are tracking his last movements?” Angela suggested. “Or I could work on strictly looking for information on whatever plant captured Randy's attention.”

  “Great idea Angela! We have no idea what the motive is in this case, but we all suspect it is something related to his business. Melissa was the only person with access from his family to kill her father and she wouldn't have called us into the case if she'd committed the murder.”

  “I wouldn't believe Melissa to be the murderer even without evidence of her innocence. She doesn't have it in her,” Angela said.

  “She could be mentally ill and cover that up or be a high functioning sociopath,” Jill suggested.

  “Both mental illness and sociopath behavior are seen when someone is in their early twenties and trust me when I say I didn't see it in college, nor have I seen any strange behaviors when
we've run into each other over the years.”

  “Okay, moving on. Is there any work for Jo to do? The company is privately held so I don't know if she'll be able to find much on it,” Jill said.

  “Why not ask her to check that box off, but like Angela I haven't heard of any company problems. They have a good record in the local community. Money may be at the heart of his murder, but we don't know where that source of money is to narrow the search for Jo.”

  Jill stopped a minute on the sidewalk to dictate a short message to Jo and then they finished the walk to the apartment.

  Brenda looked up when they entered the apartment and Jill asked, “Did you discover anything interesting?”

  “Not yet, but I tell you that this is very personal going through his communications. He's a complete gentleman in all his communications. Makes me want to re-think all my communications knowing that someday, someone might be reading them and judging any harsh words I text, or email.”

  “Oh sis,” Marie said reaching over to give her sister a hug.”As if you ever put harsh words in print.”

  “I try not to, but this has been a lesson and a motivation to stay on course,”

  “So no mention of a new product he was sourcing?” Jill asked, reminding herself to avoid ever leaving a trail of regretful words.

  “I've reached a place in his communications where he is referencing 'it',” Brenda said holding her hands up in quote marks, “But not what the 'it' is. I'm on the trail but it's a lot to sort through.”

  “I promised we would send the phone's contents to the police. You haven't seen anything that concerns you?”

  “No, nothing...professional business conversations, fatherly conversations with Melissa, no trade secrets so far and even if there were, Sicily is so far off the beaten path from our company in Green Bay that it would take years to become a competitor to any of our secrets. An important business thing you can't see on Randy's phone is access to the company's mainframe. Our IT department set our phones up so that we can log in and view items on the mainframe, but anything read on our phones is erased. I'd be concerned if the police had access to our mainframe as there are all kinds of information with company secrets there.”