Murder At The Podium

by Alec Peche

  “Let’s dispatch a team there now,” replied the Agent and within ten minutes there was a convoy of law enforcement officers heading to the address at speeds of ninety miles per hour.

  “Agent Black, one more thing, the CEO mentioned that a small plane was kept in one of the outbuildings. The CEO doesn’t fly and described the plane as too small for him to fly in although it did have four seats.”

  “Let’s contact the FAA and see if we have any small planes that took off from the coordinates mentioned,” replied Agent Black. “Since it’s a private landing strip and they’re criminals, I’m sure that no flight plan was filed. So we’ll need to trace them on radar. If they get across the border, they’re gone. We’ll dispatch a military helicopter from El Paso, but since we think there are three children on board we have to be careful with what we do.”

  The room was animated with discussions and preparations. One of the agents said, “Regional Air Traffic Control Houston has a blip on their radar screen that they think matches the plane we’re looking for. It’s about thirty minutes from the border of Mexico. Mexican authorities on their side have a helicopter approaching their border and we have a copter approaching from the west. FAA has advised the nearest landing strips for a major operation are El Paso International and Horizon Airport in El Paso. Of course Mexican authorities could follow the plane in their airspace to Juarez International Airport. We have permission to follow the plane into Juarez air space, but no farther into the interior of Mexico.”

  Another voice called out, “Agents have arrived at the ranch and there is a lone Hispanic female by the name of Sofia Torres. She says she’s the kid’s nanny and Adam left with the three children about forty-five minutes before we arrived.”

  “Damn,” replied several people in the room.

  “She also said the other man is coming back to pick her up in about three hours. She, Adam, and the children will be driving from Juarez to Culiacán over the course of the next couple of days.”

  “I don’t think he’ll be coming back for her,” replied Agent Black. “I have word that both the Mexican and the military helicopters have the small plane in sight. They are attempting to establish communication with the plane.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Crap.”

  “What?” asked Adam and then he saw what Brian was looking at.

  “Perhaps it’s a joint Mexican-U.S. Training exercise that we just happened to get close to. I’ll pretend I don’t see them.”

  Shortly the U.S. copter pulled abreast of the small plane and gestured for them to land. Brian pretended he didn’t understand them. Would they really shoot them down? Brian took the tactic of ignoring them. Then they held up a sign that said Channel 8 in English and in Spanish. Brian knew this meant that they wanted him to turn his headset to that channel for a conversation. He didn’t think he could maintain stupidity and the most basic of pilot lessons would have included training on the air channels.

  He switched to the specified channel, then said in Spanish, “I am just a Mexican citizen returning home.” Maybe denying that he knew English would give them the time they needed to cross the border. Not that the Mexican helicopter would help. He was entering a touchy area. The border area was controlled by his cartel, but farther into the city, the Juarez cartel had control and wouldn’t lift a finger to help them escape.

  A voice came back in Spanish, “We are requesting that you land immediately by order of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency. There is an airport on your right that has been cleared for your approach.”

  Brian looked over at Adam and let loose a string of cuss words. Fortunately the plane was so noisy that the kids couldn’t hear the words in the back seat. “What should we do?” Then he had a brilliant thought.

  “I have a parachute in the back and I’m pretty sure I can aim to land on the Mexico side of the river and the helicopter will follow me to the ground, but I know all the narco tunnels in that area so I should be able to escape. You can continue on piloting the plane, if the Mexican copter tries to communicate with you just stall them long enough to get beyond the city and they’ll leave you alone after that. Tell them that you have three kids on board,” Brian said as he was moving about his seat getting ready to change places with Adam, reaching for and snapping his parachute into place.

  The tricky thing about the maneuver would be closing the door after Brian jumped out and keeping the plane steady with the wind and weight changes. The only alternative was to ask his oldest kid to close the door but he wouldn’t put him at risk. Seconds later the men were in place and with a muttered ‘good luck’ and ‘Vaya con Dios’, Brian jumped out of the plane at 3,000 feet, almost the minimum requirement to deploy a parachute and survive. Adam struggled to get the door closed quickly and control the plane. He could hear his middle child crying in terror, but there was nothing he could do at the moment.

  He looked out the window and Brian was right; the helicopter was following him to the ground. Good, thought Adam, he and the kids would make it to their new home. The maneuvers that he and Brian just executed took the small plane away from where the Mexican helicopter was hovering and with any luck Adam would have just enough speed to outrun it since it didn’t look as powerful or menacing as the U.S. copter.

  He looked at his gauges and the fuel was good. He knew a little about helicopters and thought he could outrun it with speed eventually; he was likely about ten miles per hour faster. It could match him for altitude so there was no reason to waste time gaining or losing elevation. He’d been to Juarez several times and would avoid crossing into the flight path for their main airport. If he skirted the border, he would look for a private landing strip where he could park the plane and catch a ride to a car rental agency. Fortunately in his dealings with the cartel over the years he had become fluent in Spanish and he had enough cash and a gun to buy himself and the kids out of any situation. He looked out the back of the plane and he could see the copter falling further behind him. Southeast was not the direction that would get him close to his home, but eluding capture was his biggest priority. Another half an hour and he could no longer see the copter and it was time to turn inland toward the city of Chihuahua. He knew it to be a large city and it was thirty to sixty minutes away. He would dump the plane, pay cash for a car, and follow a series of highways home to Culiacán. He’d have to find a new nanny for the kids as Sophia was likely in custody of the DEA or some federal agency. He looked back at his kids and they were all asleep. The unrelenting noise of the small plane did that to people. He wondered how Brian was doing on the ground. Adam owed him big time for devising their escape plan.

  Brian jumped out of the small plane and immediately opened his parachute. He looked up and watched the American copter change course to follow him to the ground south of Juarez. Growing up in the cartel, he was well aware of the supply routes and tunnels between Mexico and the United States. He was certain he could control his parachute to land on the Mexico side, and then disappear underground. The river was one to two hundred yards wide at this point, so they would be able to see him land, but he planned to quickly disappear before any police showed up from the Mexican side.

  He landed hard as the parachute had barely had enough time to slow his descent to ground down. He released the parachute cords, and then rolled everything up as the copter hovered above the middle of the river. He looked around him for the telltale signs of a tunnel entrance. It could be a big wad of tumbleweed that never moved with the wind, or a certain rock formation, or one of the other signals used over the years to mark tunnel locations in the barren ground. He knew this region was like a gopher habitat at a zoo; it was full of rabbit holes to hide in. After a quick scan, he thought he had two possible options. He needed to be quick about it as the copter was moving menacingly slow across the river towards him. They were probably trying to get permission from Mexican authorities to land and make an arrest.

  He ran for a still tumbleweed, pulled up a small doo
r latch hidden by the weed, and dropped inside using his cell phone flashlight to light his way. He hoped this tunnel went back toward town as he had no desire to go across the border to America. He moved in as fast a pace as he could through the low ceiling, narrow walled path. Ten minutes later, to his delight, he popped up inside an empty house. A quick search of the house gave him nothing useful, so he was out the door and walking toward Juarez. There were a fair amount of trees to provide cover as he slowly made his way on foot back to town. It might take him a day or so to get there, but with success at evading arrest, he’d be willing to walk a year. He just needed to slip across the border to kill that Jill Quint. You didn’t cause trouble for the cartel and get away with it, he thought angrily.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  It was mid-day in the command post and Jill had been awake for thirty-six straight hours. She hadn’t stayed awake this long since her year as an intern and resident during her medical education. She actually felt pretty good and thought her brain was still in high gear. It helped that they were hearing about the action going on in El Paso and now south of the border. While they were working on chasing Adam Johnson and Brian Campos in the plane, she had been using the feeds given to her to locate which warehouse and oil wells the four tanker trucks visited. Not exciting work like chasing a plane, but her contribution would close down a major chemical precursor pipeline and she had to be satisfied with that so far.

  She still wanted to be in on the questioning of Adam Johnson if they caught him, but she suspected that by the end of the day, there would be no further reason for the Dallas PD to retain her as a consultant. She’d exchanged a few texts with Nathan and knowing that she was sitting in a police station working had almost eliminated his anxiety level about her.

  “We have a visual on the suspect plane,” called out the agent monitoring the helicopter dispatched from El Paso. Just as Agent Black was about to ask a question, he held up his hand so he could listen to whatever was being said. After a pause he added, “An adult male departed the plane with a parachute, the plane has crossed into Mexican airspace and now our Mexican copter is following it. Our helicopter is following the parachute to the ground.”

  After another pause, “The man folded up his parachute and retreated through a tunnel on the Mexican side of the river. Based on the pictures we provided them, the parachutist was Brian Campos. Sir, they lost him.”

  He interrupted Black again with a hand up and then added, “The plane continued southwest and was able to outrun the helicopter. It appears they’ve lost both suspects.”

  “Are Mexican officials searching for Brian Campos?” Black inquired.

  “Yes, but they aren’t expecting any success. There’re too many places to hide.”

  “Can we track Adam’s plane?”

  “We’re tracking it by radar. Normally that would be nearly impossible to identify a small plane but since we followed it all along, we’ll know where it flies.”

  “Do we know its range and speed?”

  “We can make an educated guess and based on the plane’s direction in the last fifteen minutes we believe it is heading to the Chihuahua airport. There are some smaller cities with airports that he could head to, but it would be far easier to walk away from the plane in a big city. Although, there’s been no sighting of the children, we believe they are with him, and that will make it harder on him to stay hidden.”

  “Will Mexican police help us?” Jill whispered to Castillo.

  “Yes, they should get him.”

  Black overheard Jill’s question and said, “Mexico has a long history of cooperating with the United States on a criminal apprehension for a suspect with Adam Johnson’s alleged crimes. I fully expect to have him in the El Paso office of the DEA this evening.”

  “He belongs to Dallas PD, he’ll be in Dallas tonight,” Castillo replied. “Murder is a higher crime than drug trafficking. We get first interview rights.”

  Silence reigned in the room, and Jill injected her opinion though no one asked for it, “We suspect Adam Johnson of marinating blueberries in arsenic, then baking a blueberry muffin for his wife. This is a very pre-meditated murder. His wife was a nurse giving a presentation at a conference when she passed out at the podium and then physicians in the room and later paramedics and even a hospital were unable to bring her back to life. She was the mother to those three children likely in the plane with Adam. This is a heinous crime and he needs to be taken to Dallas.”

  Castillo looked at her briefly and gave her the slightest nod of approval.

  Agent Black stared at Jill and she stared right back at him. Then he said, “A compromise, we’ll take him to the Dallas office of the DEA and you folks can interview first.”

  That was indeed a compromise that Castillo agreed with. The Dallas DA could charge Adam with first degree murder while the DEA held him and continued their investigation into the actions of the cartel and their chemical distribution network.

  “Let’s catch the bastard first, then we can fight over jurisdiction issues since he should be charged with drug trafficking in Odessa and attempted murder of Dr. Quint,” noted Detective Guerrero.

  The agent monitoring the plane’s trajectory said, “It appears he’s headed toward the city of Chihuahua. There’s a major airport there as well as an executive airport. Police are in place at each airport to apprehend Adam and his children.”

  The room went to silence waiting for the next report from the agent. Jill was thinking about the attempted murder charge. Somehow she had forgotten the terror of facing down Adam while he held a gun and had forgotten that his actions had amounted to attempted murder. At least if they couldn’t nail him for Stacy’s murder, they surely had enough evidence on the attempted murder charge.

  Five minutes later he said, “The plane is in the approach pattern for the main airport. Air traffic control will direct the plane over to an area where the police are waiting inside a terminal.”

  The room reverted to quiet conversations among colleagues as they waited for word that the Mexican police had Adam Johnson in custody. U.S. officials were in the air and expected to arrive within half an hour at the airport to extradite Adam back to the United States. A female agent would take the children and a call would be made to the two sets of grandparents to look for immediate family to take care of the kids.

  Twenty minutes later, the agent announced that Adam Johnson was in Mexican custody and U.S. officials were expected soon to take him into custody and fly him and the children back to Texas. There was an additional report that police from Juarez had been unable to locate Brian Campos. Given his long ties to the drug cartel, he might easily hide for a long time. The DEA would continue to hunt him, but there was a good feeling in the room related to Adam’s capture and the discovery and closure of the chemical pipeline.

  The discussion in the room turned to organizing the interrogation that would take place that evening. They were meeting in Dallas and if after the interview it appeared that they had no evidence connecting Adam to Stacy’s murder, then the DEA would be free to return with him to Odessa for prosecution. Castillo and Jill would return on the DEA plane to Dallas along with several agents and representatives of the Odessa police and district attorney. Fortunately the airport was in Midland and Jill had time to gather her belongings and meet them at the airport. Given their lack of sleep over the past thirty-six hours it would have been dangerous for them to drive back to Dallas that afternoon. The flight from Chihuahua to Dallas was about two hours and there would be a brief legal proceeding on both sides of the border to get him sent north.

  Castillo and Jill planned their interview strategy on the plane ride. Jill lacked experience in interviewing but she had all the forensic details in her head that might be used to trip him up. Adam’s legal representative was meeting them in Dallas. So there was nothing to stop them from starting the interview tonight. Upon arrival, they were joined by an assistant district attorney to round out the team.

  Fi
nally, six hours after his capture that day, Adam arrived in an interview room in Dallas police headquarters. His attorney met with him first and then it was Castillo and Jill’s turn with lots of other personnel watching the interview through the one-way window. The conversation started once all the legal rhetoric was out of the way.

  “Where were you two days before Stacy’s murder and who can verify your whereabouts that day?” Castillo asked.

  “I was in Odessa at work,” Adam replied looking puzzled. “I did a lot of field testing of our oil rigs, so my co-workers saw me in the morning when I arrived and then again later in the afternoon when I returned. Do you want their names?”

  “We looked at the transportation cameras around Odessa for that day and we found no record of you behind the wheel for a large chunk of the day. In fact we have record of your journey to the Midland airport, where you filed a flight plan to land at the Dallas Executive airport. We checked the cameras in Dallas and there is evidence of you behind the wheel of a rental car,” Castillo replied. “Let’s try this again, where were you that day?”