Lack of Jurisdiction

by G. K. Parks

  “Ma’am, we aren’t arresting you,” Jacobs said, attempting to get her to continue. “Why can’t you just answer the question?” She shook her head and continued to stare out the window.

  “Rachel,” I tried again, “you drugged Paul and searched his apartment for something. What was it?” She remained unresponsive, so I tried a different approach. “Why do you think Paul is responsible for Alvin’s death?”

  “Because he is.” She spun to face us with renewed vehemence. “Whatever they were doing, it involved some unsavory people.” She stared into my eyes. “I told you this the other day. The reason for my divorce was because people came to my house. Scary people, Alex. They threatened me. They threatened Alvin. I couldn’t live like that.” She blinked a few times. “Paul’s part of it.”

  “Did Paul Eastman threaten you or your ex-husband?” Jacobs asked, still working to connect the pieces.

  “No. Not directly. I don’t know who they were. I didn’t recognize them. But Paul called soon after, and he and Alvin had a long discussion. I don’t remember what they were talking about. It was a year ago, but I just remember thinking Paul was involved.”

  “So if you thought Eastman was behind the threats or involved in the threats, why did you meet him at a bar a month ago and willingly go back to his place? That seems completely counterintuitive. If you think a man’s dangerous, then you stay the hell away from him,” I argued. Admit why you were there, my internal voice screamed.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” she said quietly, returning to the chair and picking at a thread.

  “How do you know Jason Oster?” Jacobs asked. “This is his apartment.”

  “Jason’s a friend.” She met my eyes. “More than a friend, but you already know that.”

  “I thought you found it deplorable to sleep with your ex’s friends,” Jacobs retorted.

  “Jason and Alvin were never friends. They worked together, but Alvin couldn’t stand Jason. He thought Jason was out to get him. My husband was a lot of things, but he clearly wasn’t the best judge of character. Jason was just trying to do his job to protect the hotel and everyone inside.”

  “How did you meet? Company Christmas party?” I asked, feeling like something was missing.

  “After I brought the divorce papers for Alvin to sign, I went back to my car in tears. It was hard to say goodbye to the man I loved. When I was leaving, I drove into that fountain out front. It was an accident. I wasn’t paying attention, but Jason had to come out and assess the situation. He was a shoulder to cry on.” She looked around his apartment. “He still is.”

  “Ms. Romanski,” Jacobs began, but I cut him off.

  “Who told you Alvin was dead?” I asked.

  “Jason did.” Her chin quivered, and she sniffled loudly. “He told me a few nights ago.” A squeak escaped her lips, and she started to cry.

  Jacobs threw a dirty look in my direction and went to find a tissue. In that moment of privacy, I moved closer to her chair, hoping to appear comforting.

  “Does he know how it happened or who’s responsible?” I asked in a hushed tone. She shook her head. “Did he tell you to stay away from Paul?” Again, she shook her head. “Rachel, he and Paul are friends.” Maybe friends was too strong of a word, but sowing seeds of distrust and doubt might lead to real answers.

  Her eyes shot upward, searching for the truth. “Oh god,” she managed, inhaling between choking sobs.

  “The police can protect you, but you have to tell us what is going on,” I insisted.

  Jacobs returned with a box of tissues. He had been in the hallway, hoping she’d open up to me. He met my eyes and gave a slight nod as he handed her the tissue box and knelt in front of her.

  “Ms. Romanski, since someone threatened you and your husband was killed, you really need to talk to us. Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as you think.”

  “I don’t know what to think,” she whispered, dabbing at her eyes. “I just want to wake up from this nightmare.” Silence filled the void as Jacobs waited patiently for her to make a decision to talk to us. After she stopped crying, she scowled and turned to me. “You’re working with Paul. That’s why you showed up right when he did. You’re in on this.”

  “What is this?” Jacobs asked again, getting annoyed with her constant back and forth, but she ignored him.

  “Paul Eastman was poisoned. Whoever killed Alvin tried to kill him too. He isn’t involved, Rachel. Not with this. He and Alvin had other deals on the side, but he isn’t responsible for Alvin’s death.”

  The blood drained from her face. “I swear I didn’t poison him.” She turned to focus on Jacobs. “You have to believe me. I had nothing to do with any of it. Oh god. Oh god,” she continued to mumble, burying her face in her hands.

  “Then tell us why you were at Paul Eastman’s apartment,” I urged.

  “Please, ma’am,” Jacobs added, “it’s my job to find your ex-husband’s killer, and right now, I’d love to rule you out as a suspect.” He handed her another tissue and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “It’s also the best way of keeping you safe from the people who’ve threatened you.”

  “Jason said he’d protect me.” She blew her nose and balled up the tissue in her hands, worrying the edges with her fingers. “But now,” she met my eyes, “I don’t know what to believe anymore.” She leaned back in the chair and collected herself. “About six weeks ago, a man approached me when I was leaving work. I don’t know who he was. I never saw him before. He told me that Alvin owed him a lot of money, and he was coming to collect.” She bit her lip, swallowing. “I said I had nothing to do with that, and I didn’t want any trouble.”

  “What happened next?” Jacobs asked when the void in conversation lasted a little too long.

  “A week or two later, my windshield was smashed and my cat was left dead on my porch.” Her lower lip quivered, but she held it together. “The guy was waiting for me the next day. He said my bad luck would stop if I did him a favor.” She looked away. “He said that Alvin and Paul were involved in a lot of shady shit, and they ripped him off. If he found out where they stashed his money, he’d leave us alone.” She wiped at her eyes again. “He promised he wouldn’t hurt Alvin if I cooperated.” She swallowed. “So I asked Jason what he knew about Alvin’s dealings and Paul Eastman.”

  “What did Jason tell you?” Jacobs asked.

  “He didn’t know what it could be, but he said that Paul was a braggart who had his hands in a lot of different things. He didn’t necessarily trust the guy, but he thought Paul was harmless.” She blinked a few times. “They would go out for drinks occasionally after work. He just thought the guy liked to blow smoke.”

  “And that’s how you found out where Paul would be,” I added, and she nodded.

  “I went to the bar and flirted with him a little. It didn’t even take much for him to open up about his job. I listened to him talk all night about that security firm he works for and how they were in charge of some conference security. It didn’t seem relevant, but I wanted to make sure that guy wasn’t going to come back and hurt me or Alvin. Hell, he killed my cat, so what was to stop him from doing something worse?” She shook her head. “The guy had given me a listening device, and I planted it in Paul’s apartment after Paul fell asleep. I slipped a few ground up sleeping pills into his drink,” she added. “I didn’t think it would hurt him. I never meant to poison him.”

  “That’s not what did it,” I muttered as I attempted to wrap my mind around why anyone would go to such extremes instead of taking matters to the authorities.

  “No.” Jacobs shook his head as reinforcement. “Where did you put the listening device?”

  “Under his desk lamp, near his computer. It seemed like the best spot.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s where they always put stuff in movies.”

  “Do you think you could recognize that guy if you saw him again?” I asked.

  “Probably. But I don’t know who he is. I haven’t s
een or heard from him since that day.” She let out a whimper. “I thought,” she sniffed again, tears leaking from her eyes, “it was over. I thought Alvin would be safe. That we’d both be safe.” She shook her head. “When Jason told me he was dead, I knew what it would look like. And I just couldn’t go to the cops. Jason promised he’d take care of everything.”

  “Will you come down to the station and look through some photographs and make an official statement?” Jacobs asked gently. “We will protect you if you let us.”

  “Okay.”

  Thirty-four

  Just when I didn’t think things could get any more complicated, Rachel spouts out stories of threats from unidentified men and planting bugs. If this were the plot for a spy thriller, I would find it contrived and overdone. However, it was real life, or maybe I was having one hell of a lucid dream. Either way, I wanted a chance to speak with Jason Oster about these new developments and to scour Paul’s house for evidence. Unfortunately, Detective Jacobs tightened the reins and hadn’t let me out of his sight. Apparently I was in the doghouse for disclosing certain material facts to a potential person of interest.

  “The officers I sent to Eastman’s place didn’t find any listening devices. A few techs are going to sweep the entire property, just to make sure we didn’t miss something, but I don’t think they’ll find anything,” Jacobs said to Lieutenant Moretti while I eavesdropped. “Either Romanski’s lying or someone else was inside Eastman’s house and removed the alleged device.”

  “What’s Parker still doing here?” Moretti asked, narrowing his eyes, but I saw the briefest amused glint cross his face. “Are you planning to arrest her for whatever dumbass thing she did this time?”

  “No, sir. Just making sure I got all the facts straight. We’re exchanging information.”

  “Glad to hear it. Keep up the good work.” Moretti went back into his office and slammed the door.

  Jacobs slumped into his desk chair and swiveled to face me. “You’re a real pain in my ass, but despite that, you still managed to get us some useful information.”

  “How useful? You can’t corroborate any of her story. It could be bullshit. Maybe she and Jason planned the entire thing, painted Alvin as the scapegoat, and discovered where Frank Costan was keeping his stash of ill-gotten gains, and they are going to abscond with it as soon as the coast is clear. Hell, maybe they were afraid Alvin said something about it to Paul, so she went to his apartment to figure out how much he knew and the best way to poison him.”

  “Why didn’t she just end him then?” Jacobs asked, playing along with my runaway theory that neither of us truly believed.

  “The timing was wrong. It would cause Costan to go to ground. So instead, she figures out what make and model fridge he has and reports it back to Jason so they can tamper with his water filter.”

  “Except Eastman would have mentioned if Jason stopped by his place recently enough to have modified the water filter.” Jacobs picked up the forensic report on the tampering. The filter lining was laced with fluoride that ran into the water in high doses, but the smudges on the casing didn’t provide usable prints unless we had something to compare them to.

  “But Paul stayed at the hotel during the conference and left his house keys with the valet. Anyone could have swiped them, particularly someone who worked in hotel security.”

  “What kind of idiot leaves their house keys with a valet?” Jacobs asked, gleaning some useful information out of our purely hypothetical conjecture.

  “Paul Eastman, PDN’s head security management consultant.”

  “Jesus, don’t they teach anyone anything nowadays?” Jacobs rubbed his eyes and glanced across the bullpen at the sketch artist who was attempting to create a reasonable facsimile of our mystery man from Rachel’s recollection. “So what do you really think is going on?”

  “I think Rodney Wheeler and Frank Costan were working together. Costan had a lot of money, and Wheeler had a lot of connections. The remodeling inside the hotel, the access to the guest registry and security feeds, and basically everything else that was needed to pull off the two murders had to come from an inside man. Originally, I thought maybe it was one of the agents tailing or guarding Wheeler, but if this has been going on for the last six weeks or so, then it’s probably some of Wheeler’s hotel employees.”

  “Jason Oster is head of hotel security and is intimately aware of everything pertaining to Alvin Hodge’s personal and professional life. From the way Romanski was talking about Oster, I’d say he has her wrapped around his little finger.”

  “So was Jason playing her, or is she his accomplice?” I asked. We still had no hard evidence against Jason, but he had the access needed. The detective shrugged. “The only way either of us is going to get out of the dark is by sharing resources. Did you retrieve any information off the camera’s memory card yet?”

  Jacobs had received a message about this earlier, so it was about time he learned to share. “Come on,” he stood from his desk, telling one of the officers to keep an eye on Romanski before we went down the stairs to the tech department. “Since the lieutenant doesn’t seem to have a problem with you, neither do I.”

  He opened a door, and I followed him into the room. A few of the computer geniuses were working on different cases, but the information Jacobs requested was in a folder at an empty desk. He picked it up, skimming the contents, and then handed it to me. A few printed stills with corresponding dates and timestamps were included for each of the twelve recordings listed. Most were of what I could only assume were PDN’s clientele. Only the last two took place within the past month.

  “Not very helpful,” Jacobs said as I read through the transcripts. “It’s not the smoking gun we were hoping for.”

  “No. It’s not.” I lifted up the final photo from Monday night, the day before Alvin Hodge’s body was left out in the open. “But can I have a copy?”

  “Yeah, fine. Add it to your collection of unsolvable cases,” he retorted. He took the photo from me and opened one of the multipurpose printers, scanning and printing a duplicate. “I shared the evidence, so what exactly are you thinking?”

  “Well, first, whoever was actually using room 709 wasn’t getting paid by the federal government,” I pointed to the attire worn by the portion of the man we could see. Granted it was only a shoulder and part of his back, but no self-respecting federal agent, even undercover, would wear a Hawaiian print shirt. “And second, whoever it is knew the camera was there.”

  “You got all of that from a single still photo?”

  “Yeah.” I held up the video transcript. “Two seconds after Mr. Mysterious enters the room, the camera went on the fritz. And I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “It could be Eastman or Oster. Or anyone else for that matter. There isn’t much to go on.”

  “And on that positive note, I’m gonna stop by the hotel and pay Jason Oster and Gordon Russell a visit.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Jacobs said. “I need a follow-up with Oster after our morning with Romanski.” He stopped to tell the officers to keep Rachel at the precinct and he would be back soon. “What do you want with the hotel manager?”

  “He’s in charge, so he’ll know when and why the renovations were made. With any luck, it’ll trace directly back to one of the hotel co-owners, and that might just be enough to get some official answers.” I sighed and went to my car. “I’ll meet you there.”

  On the way, I phoned Mark and updated him on Rachel, the information the police obtained from the memory card Oster provided, and my current plan of attack. While I was out, Mark promised to question Eastman about Rachel’s visit to his place, if he ever found the listening device, and if he owned any Hawaiian shirts. It wasn’t much, but it was more than what we had last night.

  When we arrived at the hotel, I pulled Jacobs aside. He looked questioningly at me, and I maneuvered us around the exterior, out of sight of the security cameras. Once we were in the clear, I leaned against the
brick.

  “What did Jason tell you yesterday when you questioned him about the camera that he and Eastman set up?” I asked.

  “Nothing. He said he’d give us the memory card.”

  “Did you tell him that I broke into his locker?”

  “You broke into his locker?” Jacobs was a lousy liar, and he knew instantly I wasn’t falling for it. “Look, the guy didn’t want to press charges against you, so don’t worry about it.”

  “What did you threaten him with in order to earn his cooperation?” I knew how the game was played, and before we went inside to talk to Oster, I wanted to know exactly what had already been said and done.

  “We still don’t have any evidence against him, but I might have fudged a few details and suggested we could get a warrant and search everything he owned if he didn’t hand over the camera. Now I can mention Romanski’s in custody and is willing to speak to us, and maybe that will get him to open up on at least one of the crimes that has plagued this fine establishment.” He glanced around, making sure we were still alone. “Frankly, I was surprised when he willing came to the station. He offered up the proper memory card, and he appeared to be helpful and compliant. That typically doesn’t happen.”

  “So either he’s civically minded, or he’s one cocky bastard.” Oster must have known there was nothing damning caught on tape which was punching holes in the possibility that whatever was on that tape was something Rachel would risk meeting him at the hotel for. I guess their tryst was just that.

  “My money’s on the second one.” He jerked his head back toward the front door. “Shall we find out?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I waited a few seconds before following Jacobs into the hotel. Something didn’t feel right. Why go through all the trouble to cover your tracks, alter the security feed, and ditch Frank Costan’s body beneath the hotel when the day before Alvin Hodge was left hanging out in the open for everyone to see? It must have led to tightened security and a much more thorough assessment of all security measures. It would have made the insider’s job that much harder to smuggle Costan’s body out of the hotel, assuming he was murdered inside the trashed hotel room. We were missing a crucial connection, I could feel it.