[Lady Justice 21] - Lady Justice and the Conspiracy

by Robert Thornhill

  “Walt, this is Billy Campbell. He wants to rent a room. I thought you’d like to meet him. Billy, this is Mr. Walt. He owns the place.”

  Campbell jumped to his feet and extended his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Sir.”

  I saw right away what Mary was talking about. The guy was clean shaven, his hair was trimmed and his clothes were spotless. As far as I could recall, he was the first prospective tenant to ever call me Sir.

  “Nice to meet you too. If you don’t mind me asking, this place isn’t exactly the Ritz. You look like you could afford better.”

  “Oh, I could, but most places want me to sign a lease, and to be honest, I’m not sure how long I’ll be in town. Mary said you rent by the week and that’s perfect for me. I might be here one week, maybe two. It depends on how things work out.”

  “Looking for work?”

  He hesitated. “Uhhh, yes, work. If I find a job, I might stay longer.”

  I turned to Mary. “I don’t see a problem. Why don’t you get one of our applications and we’ll get Mr. Campbell settled in.”

  I saw the confused look on her face. We actually did have an application form, but had quit using it years ago. Basically, if a guy was breathing and had the forty bucks for the first week, he was in.

  “Just get the form, Mary. I have a pen.”

  Billy Campbell filled out the form and Mary gave him his key. “Number 6. Top of the stairs, third door on the right.”

  Billy took the key, picked up his duffel and headed up to his room.

  Mary was about to ask me why I wanted the application, when the front door burst open and Oscar Biddle from #18 came stomping out.

  “You’ve got to do something about him!” he bellowed.

  “Who?”

  “Old man Feeney. He stopped up the #3 crapper again. Smells like ass-crack in there.”

  I had been hearing that a lot lately, but this actually made sense.

  I saw Willie roll his eyes. “I’ll take care of it, but if I was actually gettin’ paid for dis job, I’d be wantin’ me some hazardous duty pay.”

  I tucked the application and the pen in my pocket and waited for Willie on the porch swing.

  I tried to time my arrival at the crime lab between shifts. I was going to ask for a favor and the fewer people who knew, the better.

  Bernie Morton was hunched over a microscope, feverishly making notes. He looked up when he heard me at the door.

  “Well, well, it’s the aged half of the dynamic duo,” he said, referring to the moniker the squad had bestowed on Ox and me. “How’s retirement?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I can’t quite get a handle on sitting around doing nothing.”

  “So I’ve heard. Got your own P.I. business. What brings you by?”

  “I need a favor.”

  I saw him roll his eyes. “Walt, as much as I like you, you know I can’t ---.”

  “Not even for a date with a special young lady?”

  He looked at me skeptically. “Who, exactly?”

  “Little Debbie,” I replied, pulling a box of the snack cakes out of a grocery bag. It was common knowledge around the precinct that he was a sucker for the tasty treats.

  “What would I have to do?”

  “Nothing earth shattering. I’ve got a fingerprint I’d like you to run.” I said, pulling the pen I’d wrapped in a sandwich bag out of my pocket.

  “That’s all?” he asked, glancing around to see if anyone was looking.

  “That’s it,” I replied.

  He grabbed Little Debbie out of my hand. “Give me the pen.”

  A few moments later, he had a clean print. “This could take a while,” he said.

  “Then let me save us both some time,” I replied. “Start with the military database.”

  The ‘Sir’ and the military buzz cut made it a good bet my new tenant had been in one of the branches of the armed services.

  He punched some keys and five minutes later, he pumped his fist. “Bingo! We’ve got a match.”

  I looked at the screen, and sure enough, there was my new tenant.

  “The name’s Charles Harris,” he said, scrolling down the screen, “And guess what!”

  “What?”

  “The guy’s AWOL.”

  “What branch of the service?”

  “Air Force.”

  “Does it say where he’s stationed?”

  He scrolled some more. “Yep, Pinal Air Base in Marana, Arizona.”

  Suddenly, everything made sense.

  “Thanks, Bernie,” I said, hustling out the door. “Don’t be too hard on Little Debbie.”

  I didn’t understand his reply. His mouth was already full.

  When I pulled up in front of the hotel, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do. I was about to confront a member of the armed services who was a hell of a lot younger and stronger than me.

  I knew the prudent thing would be to call the local Air Force office and tell them what I knew, but something held me back. I had an idea, and if I was right, calling his superiors was the worst thing I could do. If I was wrong, I was probably in for the ass-whipping of my life.

  I took a deep breath and headed up the stairs.

  I knocked.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Walt Williams, the landlord. We met earlier.”

  “Sure,” he said, opening the door. What can I do for you, Sir?”

  “We need to talk, Charles.”

  The moment of truth had arrived.

  I half expected a fist in the face, but instead, he stepped aside. “How did you know?”

  “I used to be a cop,” I replied. “Your cover story was good, but your ‘Sir’ and your buzz cut gave you away. It’s not easy shedding years of military training. If my information is correct, you’re AWOL and people are looking for you.”

  “Are you going to turn me in?”

  “That depends on what you tell me in the next five minutes. You were stationed at Pinal Air Base in Arizona?”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t suppose you knew a pilot named Dale Fox?”

  I saw the look of astonishment register on his face. “How --- how did you know that?”

  “Well, did you?”

  “Hell yes I knew him. I was a member of his flight crew. If you knew Dale, then you know he’s dead.”

  “Is that why you ran?”

  He sighed and nodded. “We were doing some pretty weird stuff out there. We were told our missions were classified and we were not to talk about them to anyone. They said it was a matter of national security. Dale knew a lot more about the missions than I did.

  “He told me one day he was going to talk to a reporter. I tried to talk him out of it. Our commanding officer had made it clear that doing something like that would have dire consequences.”

  “So why are you running? You didn’t spill the beans.”

  “Because I knew he was going to do it and I didn’t report it to my commanding officer. As far as they’re concerned, I’m just as guilty. When I heard Dale was dead, I figured I was next.”

  “So what’s your plan? I’m sure you know if they catch you, you’ll be spending a lot of years in Leavenworth.”

  “I figure three things could happen. I could disappear and they never would find me, or they could catch me and I’d go to prison. Either of those two things would be better than the third alternative.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What they did to Dale.”

  He looked me in the eye. “So, are you going to turn me in?”

  “I probably should, but I won’t. Will you promise me one thing?”

  “Anything.”

  “Wherever you wind up, if you see national headlines exposing the missions at Pinal Air Base, you’ll call me so we can talk.”

  “I promise.”

  “Good luck and God speed,” I said, leaving the distraught young airman sitting on a lumpy mattress in a fleabag hotel. I’m sure this wasn’t the way he ha
d pictured his military career ending.

  The next morning, Mary called. “Mr. Walt, Billy Campbell, the young man you met yesterday, he moved out in the middle of the night. He paid for a full week and only stayed one night. He didn’t even ask for a refund.”

  I probably wouldn’t have either.

  CHAPTER 10

  A few days later, I was once again pouring over the Kansas City Star in between spoonsful of Wheaties and sips of coffee. I’m very set in my ways and once I find something that suits me, I stick with it.

  Maggie says I’m stuck in a rut, but doing the same thing over and over saves a lot of decision making. Once in a while I’ll fool her and whip up a batch of hotcakes.

  For some reason, maybe because I’m seventy-two, I always glance through the obituaries. Once in a while I’ll spot the name of an old classmate or someone I knew years earlier. My tenant Jerry says he reads the obits and if his name isn’t there, it’s going to be a good day.

  I was going down the list when a name jumped out and smacked me in the face.

  Frank Katz was dead.

  The listing gave his age as eighty-two and talked about his lengthy tenure at the university. He was survived by one granddaughter, Samantha Stewart.

  I folded the paper under my arm and headed down to the Professor’s apartment. I figured since he hadn’t called me, he probably hadn’t heard about the demise of his old friend. I didn’t want to break the news over the phone.

  As I expected, he hadn’t heard and the news came as quite a shock.

  “So sad,” he said. “I talked to Frank just last week. He was so excited about finishing his thesis.”

  “Yes, he called me, too. I’d like to know more about how he died. The paper says he had one granddaughter, Samantha. By any chance do your know her, maybe have her phone number?”

  “Yes, I believe I do. When I was still teaching, Sam would pop into the teacher’s lounge every now and then, and I saw her at school functions. Let me see if I can find her number.”

  After a few minutes, he returned and handed me a slip of paper. “When you talk to Sam, please give her my condolences. Her father was a great teacher and an even greater friend.”

  I hadn’t mentioned it to the Professor, but I had the nagging feeling there was more to Frank Katz’ death than was reported in the paper. Was it just a coincidence Dale Fox was about to give hard evidence of the chemtrail conspiracy to Jack Carson, but died in a car wreck before he could deliver the goods, and now Frank Katz is dead after completing a thesis which would expose the government’s dirty little chemtrail secrets? I was willing to bet he passed away before he could submit his thesis for publication. Unlucky coincidence? I didn’t think so.

  I desperately wanted to talk to Samantha Stewart, but I had another call to make first.

  “Ox, this is Walt. Are you still at the precinct?”

  “Hi Partner. We were just leaving.”

  “Can you do me a favor before you go?”

  “Sure, name it.”

  “Two days ago, a Frank Katz passed away. The paper didn’t say where he died. Could you find the report from the attending officers?”

  “I’ll take a look and call you back.”

  Ten minutes later, the phone rang.

  “Walt, I’ve got it. It says a student at the university stopped by Frank Katz’ office early that day and found him sitting at his desk, stone cold dead. There was no sign of foul play and Katz’ doctor said the old guy had a bum ticker, so it was ruled a natural death, probably a heart attack, and the body was released to the next of kin.”

  “Thanks, that’s just what I needed.”

  “Why the interest?”

  “It’s a long story. Maybe you and Judy can come over this weekend and I’ll fill you in.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I’ll have Judy give Maggie a call.”

  Heart attack. Pretty convenient.

  I had just finished a case where a sadistic s.o.b. was murdering patients in the cardiac wing of one of the city’s large hospitals. He would sneak in after hours and inject potassium chloride into their I.V. line while they were sleeping. The drug stops the heart and mimics the symptoms of a heart attack. Since the patients were all there because of heart problems, it was assumed they died of natural causes.

  I needed to get to Samantha Stewart and persuade her to have an autopsy done on her father’s body to look for injection marks and the presence of potassium chloride in his system.

  After explaining I was a friend of the Professor, Samantha Stewart agreed to meet with me.

  Her home on Brookside Boulevard was just a stone’s throw from the university.

  She greeted me warmly and invited me inside.

  “So how do you know the Professor?”

  “I’m a UMKC graduate and I took a number of his classes. He became somewhat of a mentor to me. When he retired, he rented an apartment in my building on Armour Boulevard. I live on the third floor, he lives on the first. He asked me to convey his condolences on the passing of your grandfather.”

  “Please give him my thanks. He and Granddad were such good friends.”

  “About your grandfather, I know he supposedly died of natural causes, but I just wonder if you considered asking for an autopsy.”

  I saw the confused look on her face. “Why in the world would I do that? Dr. Friedman said it was most likely a heart attack.”

  I didn’t want to alarm her. “It probably was. By any chance did you know what your grandfather was working on?”

  “Not for sure. I know he was really excited about some paper he had just finished. You know how people in academic circles are, the old ‘publish or perish’ rule. He was eighty-two. I don’t know why he was so concerned about being published at his age.”

  “So he never told you what the paper was about?”

  “Never, and even if he did, I probably wouldn’t have understood a word of it.”

  “He actually called me a week or so ago. I had given him some information he used in his thesis and he was telling me he was getting ready to submit it for publication. It was really an important document. I don’t suppose you’d know where it is?”

  She thought for a moment. “It had to be either in his home office or his office at the university. Someone from the Arts and Sciences Department came by the day after his death and wanted to know if I would be willing to donate his paperwork and files to the university. They said something about cataloging them in the Linda Hall Library on the campus. Frankly, I was relieved. He had several file cabinets full of stuff and I had no idea what to do with all of it. So either way, the people at the university must have it.”

  “Back to the autopsy ---.”

  She held up her hand to stop me. “I still don’t understand why you think an autopsy is necessary, but it’s actually a moot point.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because Granddad was cremated. He wanted it that way.”

  My heart sunk. I would have bet anything an autopsy would have revealed potassium chloride in his system, but now we would never know.

  I knew I wasn’t going to get anything more from Samantha Stewart, so I thanked her for her time and left.

  My next stop was at the Arts and Sciences building on the UMKC campus.

  A secretary announced my presence to the head of the department, Arnold Gregory.

  “I have a few moments before a staff meeting, Mr. Williams. How may I help you?”

  “I have a few questions about Frank Katz.”

  “Ahh, yes. Poor Frank. Such a loss. He will be missed.”

  “I understand your department has collected his papers and files to be catalogued into the Linda Hall Library.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “His granddaughter, Samantha Stewart.”

  “I can’t imagine why she’d say such a thing. The only contact I’ve had with Mrs. Stewart was to offer our condolences.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

&nbs
p; “How about his office here at the university?”

  “There was not much there, not even a computer. He’s done most of his work at his home office these past few years.”

  Another dead end.

  Someone had contacted Samantha Stewart claiming to be from the university and cleaned out the old guy’s office which undoubtedly held the damning manuscript.

  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess who had orchestrated the whole thing.

  I was totally bummed.

  Two men were gone, along with all the evidence they had collected to expose the government’s poisoning of our skies.

  It was becoming quite apparent the people behind these dastardly acts would stop at nothing to keep their program under wraps.

  I had planned to go home, pour a glass of Arbor Mist and try to decide what I should do next.

  I knew I had to contact Jack Carson and tell him of this latest development, but beyond that I should probably do nothing, because that’s what I’d promised Maggie.

  I stopped at the mailbox and found it stuffed full of bills. It was that time of the month. I had already decided my involvement in the chemtrail case should come to an end, so I resigned myself to an afternoon of bill paying.

  Since retiring from real estate, I was rarely on the computer. Social media just wasn’t my thing. I didn’t have an account on Facebook, Twitter, or any of the other message sites. Every few days I would log on to check my email and I had learned to pay my bills online, saving me the agony of handwriting checks and paying for first class postage.

  I fired up the old Toshiba and was about to log on to my bank account when the butler strolled across my screen and announced, “You have mail, Sir.”

  I figured I might as well look so he would go away.

  There was the usual stuff, a message from a guy in Nigeria saying he needed to get twenty million dollars out of the country and he’d split it with me if I would just send him my bank account information. Then there was the ad for a product promising to add three inches to my penis. I thought about getting that and surprise Maggie, but decided against it. I’d have to buy bigger briefs and I don’t like to shop.