by T. E. Woods
“You bet,” Robbie said. “California. About two years ago. Arrested for human smuggling. Her attorney got her out on bail and she went right back into business. But a shipment goes bad and ninety-one Chinese, mostly women, die in a closed container truck left in some desert canyon. Man, I salivated over that story. That was some top-notch crime reporting. Didn’t the police track her down in Sicily?”
“You got it. Said she was visiting family but decided to extend her stay when she realized Sicilian extradition laws forbid sending anyone back if capital punishment is an option. California authorities’ hands were tied.”
“She turned up dead, though.” Robbie asked. “I remember the stories about Divine Intervention.”
“Maybe not so divine,” Mort said. “Dahlia drowned when her fishing boat hit a reef and sank. At least seven people who saw Dahlia charter that fishing boat swear the captain was a woman.”
“Let me guess. The captain’s body’s never been found.”
“Bingo,” Mort said. “And they describe that captain as having a large scar across her face. Not something anyone would miss on a Jane Doe floating to shore.”
“You said you had two more?” Mort could hear his son clicking the keys of a computer.
“Nine months before Dahlia’s boat went down. You remember Jeremiah Valshon’s suicide?”
“The CEO of that chemical company with the plant down in Brazil? The one that exploded and killed, what was it, three thousand villagers?”
“That’s the guy. The government wanted to indict him on criminal charges, saying he deliberately placed the plant in Brazil to avoid safety measures that would cost his company a bundle if he built it in the U.S.”
“I also recall the Senate backpedalling. Saying U.S. investments would be hampered if they set the precedent of a CEO being held criminally responsible for activities outside the country. Valshon got a pass. But maybe his conscious got the better of him. Didn’t he hang himself?”
“He did. I remember thinking at the time a guy who’s got stones big enough to become top exec in a company that size doesn’t off himself. It turns out our guy Vashon went to dinner that night with a woman. Took her to his favorite restaurant in Boston. The staff described her as a “can’t miss”. A real good-looking redhead with a tattoo of an angel wrapping her right arm from wrist to shoulder.”
“Never found?” Robbie asked.
“Bingo again. The third was Ritchie Ortega.”
“The movie star? Drowned in his hot tub, right?” Robbie drew in a deep breath of recognition. “After he’d been acquitted of raping those two teenagers. I remember speculation that someone had paid off enough jurors to hang it. Judge declared a mistrial and the prosecutor decided not to re-file despite other young women swearing Richie’d pulled the same thing with them. What did you find?”
“The woman who ran an escort service Richie liked told police a new girl stopped by looking for work a couple of days before Richie called saying he wanted something exotic. The madam said she thought of the new girl right away. Thought the bright red Mohawk she sported would give him a thrill. Madam sent her and Richie turns up dead. No one could find the hooker. Case gets labeled an accident and mothers everywhere exhaled.”
“Three dead people. Three missing female witnesses.” Robbie sounded hopeful. “Sounds like something, Dad.”
“These aren’t just three dead people, Robbie. These are three very bad people. People who wiggled through the justice system. Got away with rape and murder on a horrific scale.” Mort’s voice was firm. “And these aren’t just female witnesses, either. Each had some physical feature that made people take notice.”
“Martin said his shooter, Graham, had a tattoo of a heart and dagger.” Mort could hear Robbie flipping paper. “And Halloway’s hooker was described as having a port wine stain across her neck.”
“Enough to send the cops looking for something specific. If they wanted to look at all.” Mort tapped his pen against the counter. “The shooter in Miami threw your guy…, what was his name?”
“Martin.”
“Yeah,” Mort said. “The shooter threw Martin straight to the cops when she learned he was a no-good husband looking to off his wife. His target wasn’t bad enough for her.”
“What’s your point, Dad?”
Mort blew out a long breath. “You’re looking at a vigilante, Robbie. This woman sees herself as a righter of wrongs.”
Robbie was quiet for a moment. “If you’re right, I can think of a lot of people who’d give her a parade for taking those people out.”
Mort remembered his conversation with Larry. “And that’s exactly why people like her are so dangerous.”
“Sounds like my Halloway story might have gotten a little bigger, huh?”
Mort flipped the file closed. “Can you handle it?”
Robbie laughed. “I always do, Dad. Now let me get to bed. You’ve given me a full agenda for tomorrow.”
“Will you do me a favor?” Mort asked.
“Name it.”
“Find out how Martin contacted the shooter. Let me know.” Mort hung up the phone, drank his milk, and climbed the stairs to his empty bed.
Micki Petty was sitting in his office when he got to work at 7:00 the next morning. Mort tossed his brief case on his desk and hung his soggy parka on the coat rack behind his door. “Jimmy see you yet?”
Micki laughed and the rain outside Mort’s window lost its dreary power. “I figured I’d beat him in. You got some time for me?”
“I got a pulse, I got time for you, Mack.” He nodded toward the expandable file she held in her lap. “What do you have there?”
“You know that sound equipment in Buchner’s living room?” she asked.
“The fancy tape recorders? Jimmy says the university wants them back as soon as we’re done.” He settled one hip on his desk. “So? Are we done?”
Micki held his gaze and slowly shook her head. “Not by a long shot.”
Mort knew Micki could sniff out a grain of sand in a blinding snowstorm. Before he could ask what she’d found his attention was pulled to the sight of Jim DeVilla walking down the corridor, Bruiser lumbering by his side. He rolled his eyes as Jimmy stopped and leaned into Mort’s office.
“Hey, Pardner, what’s up?” Jimmy feigned a double-take. “Why, Detective Petty. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Mort waved him in and told him to shut the door. “Do you have some sort of radar?” Mort watched Bruiser sidle up to Micki for morning kisses. “Or have you trained Officer K-9 here to lead you to her?”
Jim feigned nonchalance. “I might have heard Daphne mention Micki was here to see you. Made me wonder if this has to do with the Buchner case. Maybe there’s some piece of evidence you might want the Chief of Forensics to know about.”
“Sit your love-sick ass down.” Mort watched Bruiser nuzzling Micki’s hair. “The both of you. Micki was about to tell me something about that fancy recording gear in Buchner’s place.”
Micki snapped the band on the thick file and pulled out a folder. “It’s one-of-a-kind, that’s for sure. It’s essentially an amalgam of several different pieces of audio equipment.”
“An amalgam?” Jim turned to Mort. “Do you need me to define the term?”
“Save it for happy hour, Jimmy.” Mort directed a raised eyebrow toward his friend. “Go on, Micki.”
“It’s a digitized voice synthesizer coupled to a powerful microprocessor and accented with a few more devices. What Buchner had in his home is the main unit. Think of it as the mother ship. I found slots for several hand-held remote devices.” She handed copies of the diagram she’d drawn to each man. “The quality’s fantastic. There’s nothing mechanical or artificial sounding in it at all.” She pulled several pages of notes from her folder. “The output is virtually limitless. You could assume the voice of someone famous. You could design a specific accent. Male, female, adult, child. You name it, this bad boy can produce it.”
&nb
sp; “How does it know what you want to say?” Jim was using his professional tone now and Mort was glad to hear it.
“Any number of ways. You could type something on a keyboard and the machine will read it. Or, you could speak directly into a microphone and it will reproduce your words in whatever voice you choose. It’ll capture anything digital.” Micki’s excitement over her discovery was obvious. “There are also keys for commonly used words and phrases. A simple touch and the machine will speak. There’s even a scanner where you can insert something printed and have it read to you. This thing could be great. Blind people, folks with cerebral palsy, stroke victims, spinal cord injuries. I get why the university is so interested in this.”
Mort nodded. “You thinking that maybe this gizmo is our motive, Mack? Somebody gets wind of what Buchner’s working on and decides to make it their own?” He scowled. “But wouldn’t they just take it? Why kill the miner and leave the gold behind?”
“Maybe we interrupted them.” Jimmy stroked Bruiser’s head resting on his lap. “You’ve seen the thing. Must weigh a couple hundred pounds, easy. Maybe they offed poor old Wally, then realized they needed more muscle or a bigger car. When they came back they see the squad cars and flashing lights and drive right on by.”
“That doesn’t smell right,” Mort said. “Anybody who knows what this thing does knows how big it is. They’d bring what they needed to haul it out of there.”
“Unless they think they already had what they wanted. Like I said, there are spots for hand-held remote devices. Only the mother ship was found.” Micki pulled out another file. “But if somebody thought they got what they needed by taking the remotes, they thought wrong. This machine records everything that’s run through it.”
Both men knew Micki turned into a pitbull when working a case. Once she locked her jaws on a clue she didn’t let up until she chewed it raw.
“It may be fancy in all its applications,” Micki said. “But at its heart it’s a computer. I ran a forensic dig on its files. I found a lot of test runs. It was when I started looking at what had been erased or downloaded that the fun started.”
“Do tell.” Jimmy leaned in close.
“Like I said, everything the machine does gets recorded, whether it’s produced by the mother ship or one of the remotes. But I discovered several long tracks of conversation manufactured by the machine were erased. They were more than erased. They were scoured. Downloaded first, then erased, then scrambled in the trash file. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to make sure what was gone stayed gone.”
“But they weren’t counting on Super Sleuth Petty,” Jim said.
“You can’t believe what I went through to reassemble them. Took me two days and half of last night.” Micki’s eyes twinkled as she pulled a CD out of her file.
Mort pointed to a player on his shelf. He grabbed two notepads and a couple of pens off his desk. He tossed one set to Jimmy.
“Ready when you are, Mack.” Mort crossed his legs and used a knee for a desk.
Micki inserted the CD and pressed “play”. A digitized voice yelling “stop where you are” came over the speakers, followed by “Are you Carr?” Then a man’s voice: “wait”. Then a woman’s: “I’m afraid”. Then a child’s: “Wait Miss Carr”.
Mort signaled and Micki stopped the player. “Each of these voices was manufactured by the machine?”
Micki nodded.
“Incredible,” Jimmy said. “Sounds real to me. Except for the first one, of course.”
Micki graced them with a wide smile and Mort understood why Jimmy turned into an infatuated adolescent around her. “Wait til you hear who’s coming up next. Ready?”
Both men nodded and Micki pressed the button. Mort and Jim dropped their jaws when Barbara Streisand’s voice came out of the speakers. They listened, stunned, as the machine manufactured a Boston-accented male. Mort signaled again for her to stop.
“We’re hearing half a conversation here, Mack.” He checked his notes. “Any idea who this ‘Ms Carr’ is?”
Micki shook her head. “The device only records what it manufactures or what is run through the machine directly. I’m afraid we have no record of who Ms Carr is, what she said, or even how long of a time lag exists between machine items. It’s easy in some spots to infer what Carr might have said, just from the flow of the machine-generated responses.”
“This is all very interesting.” Jim smiled up at Micki. “And it goes without saying I’m always happy to be in your company. But it’s just somebody showing off their machine. Probably Buchner was trying to con some coed out of her panties and wanted to wow her with the power of his nerdiness.” He turned to Mort. “No offense to the socially inept in the room.”
“You won’t think so when you hear what’s next.” Micki stood with her finger poised on the play button. “Buckle those seat belts, boys. It’s about to turn into overtime.”
The recordings started again. Within twenty seconds both men sat bolt upright and scribbled notes throughout the one-sided conversation that could be interpreted as nothing other than a negotiation for a contracted murder on someone named Fred Bastian.
It was over in less than ten minutes. Micki removed the CD and sat down, waiting for them to say something.
“Whose prints are on the machine?” Mort stared down at his notepad. “And if you tell me only Buchner’s, I want to know if it looks like the damned thing’s been wiped down.”
“No prints period, Mort. Not even Buchner’s and it was sitting in his living room.” Micki turned to Jim. “You got a question?”
“I got a million of them. Like for starters, who’s Fred Bastian and what did he do to this monkey Ortoo that would make someone put a hit on him?”
Micki reached into her folder and pulled out another disc. “You remember me telling you the machine records not only what it generates, but everything that’s run through it? How it’ll take anything digital as input?”
Mort tried not to sound inpatient. “What have you got?”
Micki circled behind Mort’s desk and asked if she could log onto his computer. Mort nodded and both men stood behind her as she took a seat at Mort’s console and inserted the DVD into the reader.
“When I heard Bastian’s name I went back into the machine’s memory and ran a trace on it. I was looking for anything anywhere that was tagged ‘Fred’ or ‘Bastian’. Again, I found a slew of records that had been scoured. But these were video. They were stored in another part of the memory. That’s why we didn’t hear any words from them on the first CD, which was strictly audio.” She looked over her shoulder to the two investigators leaning in to watch the computer monitor. “Neither of you are squeamish, right?”
She started the video.
“So that’s Bastian?” Mort asked. “Looks like your typical science geek.”
“This must have been playing when that part about Bastian and his monkeys was being discussed, huh?” Jim said as the video of Bastian giving a tour of his lab screened. “Any video about that gorilla Ortoo?”
“Wait,” Micki said. “And get ready for nightmares tonight.”
The second video came on.
“Holy Mother of God,” Jim whispered. Bruiser snapped to attention at his master’s change of mood. “That’s one huge ape.”
“It’s a gorilla,” Micki corrected. “Watch how he goes berserk when Bastian shows up.”
They watched the magnificent animal rage. Then tranquilized. They saw him chained.
The three of them sat silent and watched Ortoo’s blood spray across his assailant while Bastian cut off the gorilla’s head with a reciprocating saw. Mort felt his stomach lurch and his anger climb as he watched Bastian hold the great creature’s severed head to view his own body.
The video ended and still they remained silent.
Mort stood and tossed his notepad on his desk. He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to will the images from his brain. “We gotta get next to this Bastian.”
“Why?” Jim’s soft voice was focused steel. “I say turn the other way and let the hit happen. Son of a bitch.”
“We’re not paid to turn the other way, Jimmy.” Mort put his hand on Micki’s shoulder. “You got contact info on Bastian, Mack?”
Micki spun around in the chair and looked at Mort with wide eyes. “You guys don’t follow the local news much, do you?”
“Not unless there’s a score or somebody’s bleeding,” Jim said. “What we miss?”
“Bastian’s dead.” Micki looked at each of them in turn. “Died just before Christmas. Heart attack.”
Mort and Jim looked at each other. Nearly three decades of friendship afforded a silent and effective communication.
Jimmy stroked Bruiser’s flank.
Mort glanced at his watch.
“Listen,” he said. “I gotta leave for Olympia in a couple of hours. Micki, great work. Let’s keep this one close for the time being. Run background. You’re looking for anything, beside this, that links Buchner to Bastian. For all we know Buchner just had the plain shitty luck of babysitting this fancy recording thing when the bad guys came looking for it. “
“I’m on it,” she said.
“Jimmy, can you get with the coroner’s office? Find out for sure how Bastian died. Check with Tyler Conner. He’s the best examiner down there. I’ll contact the university and see what I can learn there.”
“I’ll do it.” Mort knew DeVilla’s mind as well as he knew his own. He watched his friend turn toward the door and hesitate before walking through. Jimmy called back to Mort and Micki. “But I’m doing it for Ortoo. Far as I’m concerned, whoever took Bastian out is a fucking-A hero.”
Bruiser followed him. The picture of canine determination.
Chapter Thirty-One
Mort counted it a stroke of luck when he called the Neuroscience Department and learned that Jerry Childress, the acting chairman, was with his fiance at a hospital in Olympia. He walked into the Black Hills ICU around ten-thirty. Mort figured he could ask him a few questions about Bastian and still have plenty of time to meet Lydia at noon. He showed his credentials to the charge nurse and was directed to Bay 13.
