Willow Glen Heist

by Alec Peche

  “Yes to both of your questions.”

  “Okay. I’ll come up with a plan.”

  “Sorry? I don’t understand.”

  “I need to develop a plan that accomplishes three things,” Damian said counting off his fingers. “One Hermione stays safe and is no longer bother by you or any other person associated with Mr. Lin. Two allows us to get your parents released from captivity unharmed, and three expose Mr. Lin to the terrible CEO that he is. Does that cover everything?” Damian asked.

  John Lee looked at him in confusion and said, “Are you proposing to rescue my parents from Mr. Lin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would you help me? You could just turn me over to American authorities.”

  “Yes I’m glad you realize that. I could just call the cops and turn you over, but then Mr. Lin would just send someone new and we would start all over again protecting Hermione. So that doesn’t solve my problem. I am not the type of low life human that would harm you or your Mr. Lin. I would rather beat you both with brain power.”

  “Who are you?” John finally asked. “You’re not your average American. How do you propose rescuing my parents? That seems to be the tricky question in your scenario.”

  “I agree with you as I have never been to Kuala Lumpur nor do I know your country’s culture or geography. With your help we can figure something out. I would like to release you to assist me in looking for answers but I’m not putting my own safety at risk. Let me warn you that this room and the lab beyond have a number of layers of security that will keep me safe, but make a mess of my lab or this room if I have to deploy them. For example, if you had tried to escape last night, the moment you put your hands on the door, you would have been doused in green slime. The slime is a combination of oil and poison oak, so you would have broken out in an awful itchy rash soon after it touched your skin.”

  John Lee looked both chagrined and chastened with Damian’s explanation.

  “So I would like your word that for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, that you’ll live in a peaceful manner in my home and on my island while we figure out how to rescue your parents,” Damian said looking into the man’s eyes. He considered himself a good judge of character, but this man was from a different culture and it wouldn’t be the first time he made an error on that basis.

  “I agree,” Mr. Lee said with both hope and fear in his voice. “If your green slime is anything like that liquid that landed in my eyes, I’ll be itching the rest of my life. Besides until I had this case, I never worked anything other than a missing person case or on occasion an adultery case. I lack the ingenuity to get myself off this island. I will follow your lead. How can I help?”

  Damian stood up and said, “I trust you but I don’t. I’m going to re-lock you in the room while I grab a shower and dress. Then I’ll be back to free you and offer you a shower and breakfast, then we’ll get to work.”

  Chapter 44

  Thirty minutes later the two men were outside fishing for his cats’ breakfast. Damian was of a mind at times that watching a man or woman fish told you something about their character. Fortunately when Ariana packed a bag for John Lee she included some clothing during the abduction, so the man didn’t have to fish in his drawers which would have been a very cold endeavor. He dropped her an email that morning with the progress he made with John and word that he wouldn’t be over to his Richmond warehouse to the staff there. He had a small smile at that thought. In less than a year ago, his body could have laid dead for months on his island, now he had people that would worry about him if he was a few hours late.

  After making breakfast for his pets and chopping fish for later meals, the two men returned to his lab and Damian got to work. John Lee was amazed by the man and understood why he so easily protected the teenager, his technology was a wonder.

  “What do you want to do with your parents once they are freed?”

  “I don’t understand your question. What do you mean do with my parents?”

  “Do you want them to be able to resume their lives farming or will it be difficult?”

  John Lee now understood Damian’s question.

  “If Mr. Lin is neutralized, they will be safe to continue farming.”

  “So if we shine a bright light on his practice of making diluted drugs, he’ll become someone with no power, disrespected, and perhaps imprisoned by your government despite his connections?”

  John thought about that for a while before giving his answer. His government was by and large ethical and would shun Mr. Lin for bad business practices, but would they contain him from doing any more harm? Then he had an idea.

  “Mr. Lin brings tax dollars to the government and is revered as a businessman in addition to his family connections. He holds a position of respect. If we could figure out the names of some people inside the Malaysian government that have been harmed by his medications, that will neutralize him, but how do we do that?”

  “Good question, let me look into your health care system. Do you recall if your medical record is computerized when you visit a doctor?”

  John looked affronted at the question he thought Damian was asking. “Yes we use computers in our hospitals. We are not backward.”

  “That’s not my question. When you visit your local doctor, does he or she write information by hand or do they carry some kind of computer for entry of information that you tell them.”

  “I haven’t been to a doctor for several years, but I know from others that use it that yes they use computers in that manner.”

  “Okay then that makes it easier to gain information. Let me look at this company and see if I can determine the types of medications he sells and then from there that might give us some ideas of where to look for people that have been harmed.”

  “I can tell you since my own parents take some of his medication and now you have me worried for their health. He makes the most common pill used for diabetes that my father been taking for at least five years. My mother has high blood pressure and she takes a drug he makes for that.”

  “With the help of medication, are your parents in reasonably good health?”

  “No their problems have not gone away. They’re probably taking diluted medications. I know their doctors have puzzled about why they don’t work.”

  “Okay get me the names of their medication and we’ll go from there. By the way, are there any other pharmaceutical companies in Malaysia?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t follow that industry,” John said.

  “Do you have friends whose health conditions haven’t seemed to be under control?”

  “Yes. I have one friend who’s blood pressure is always out of control no matter what he does. He hates going to the doctor because the doctor always accuses him of not taking his medication. His supply must be coming from Mr. Lin’s company.”

  “Do you think you could get some of the pills from your parents or your friends that I could have analyzed? I’m thinking up providing a popular journalist in your country as well as one here and providing them with the analysis of the medication and stories of people whose chronic diseases should be under control but are not. Normally something like this would take months to put together, but we don’t have that kind of time. I’d like to get this done in under a week. If I arrange a charter plane to get you home to Malaysia, could you collect a sample of prescription drugs in say three or four hours and fly back to the United States?”

  Things were moving fast for John Lee. The thought of flying on a private plane to home and back was unimaginable. He had a glimmer of hope that this American had the resources to expose Mr. Lin for all of his unethical and illegal business practices, and then he thought of a problem.

  “Mr. Lin is supposed to call me at ten in the morning tomorrow. How do I take his call if I’m on a plane?”

  “Your phone will work on the planes Wi-Fi, but let’s think of a reason you won’t be available and for him to delay calling you by a day. I wouldn’t
want him to be suspicious if he hears the background noise of a jet airplane. Have you ever delayed another phone call to him? We may as well start with what has worked in the past.”

  “I’ve had to delay a few calls whenever I had Hannah or her family under surveillance and it would’ve been detrimental for my voice to carry while talking on a cell phone. So drop them a line and delay the call saying that I’m carrying out surveillance at the high school to make another grab of the kid,” John said. Then he shrugged and said, “It’s not far from the truth. It’s what I’ve would’ve been doing if you hadn’t intercepted me.”

  Damian just gave him a long pained look and said, “The kids’ name is Hermione, not Hannah. Can you make that correction? It’s annoying me. Notify your Mr. Lin of your planned surveillance and let’s get you out of here. A word of caution, once you arrive in Kuala Lumpur, you’re free to disappear into your country. I won’t pursue you, but your parents won’t be safe either. Do you have a friend that can get you prescription medications on short notice?”

  “Yes I can do that and I’ll be back. You’re my only hope at the moment of freeing my family.”

  “Okay then. We’re going to take my boat over to Richmond and I’ll drive you back to your hotel so that you have whatever you need to travel with. Then I’ll drop you off at San Francisco International airport and you’ll start your eighteen hour journey there and back. So you need to line up people now that will give you their medication or a pharmacy to dispense it with a physician’s order. You can also make arrangements from the plane. Come back as soon as you have what I need. If you get that done in an hour after clearing customs, then the plane will fly back sooner. I need bottles with drug names on them. Got it?”

  “Yes. I’ll text you an image to make sure that what I have will work before I leave to return.”

  With that Damian had John Lee underway to collect what he hoped could be used to expose the corruption of Mr. Lin and his corporation. He also lined up a couple of reporters in New York and San Francisco to cover the story. The reporter in New York also had ties to the main Malaysian paper - The Star. As Damian steered his boat back home after dropping off John, he wondered how he had gotten tangled up in this latest conspiracy. Would his life ever revert to that of a simple inventor?

  Chapter 45

  Natalie was kicking the side of her metal desk in frustration. It appeared as though the delay suffered by the judge wanting to chat with Damian was all the time the twins needed to disappear from Michigan.

  After the one twin lost the trooper in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, word had filed back to the Traverse City folks and they had interviewed the landlord and employers of the twins.

  They had been model renters in the years they have lived in the apartment. The rent was always paid on time and they were quiet as a church mice. They said they had to leave town on an emergency to move to the south to take care of a relative with cancer. They left the apartment paid for sixty days and fully furnished for the next renter . The landlord couldn’t tell the two women apart and never knew which one he was speaking to. One of the twins had notified him yesterday that she was leaving from work to drive south and she said the other twin had already left ahead of her.

  The two employers had told the same story. They had a first name for each of the twins, but to be honest the other twin might have worked. They were punctual and except for the odd day off for a flu bug, they’d been model employees. Both diner owners were upset with the short notice and sorry to lose the worker. Neither woman had been close to any other employee at their respective diner. The twins occasionally socialized with folks, but after interviewing the other employees, no one seem to know much private information about either girl.

  They had shared the girl’s picture with Canadian authorities, but it was now thirty-hours beyond when the troopers first lost sight of one of the twins and it appeared that the other twin left a full twenty-four hours earlier according to her employer. Was the case basically closed because the two women escaped United States’ jurisdiction? Sure they could post something on Interpol, but Natalie thought these two women were too smart to be caught as they evaded law enforcement for nearly a decade now.

  There were two other options she could pursue - shutting down their assets if she could find them and having the Michigan Troopers dust the girl’s apartment for prints just from a confirmatory point of view. Then she thought of a third option.

  They clearly took off unexpectedly. Maybe one of them had a sixth sense that they were closing in. What if they found their stash. Maybe they hadn’t time to finish selling all of the goods or to have exchanged all of the cash from the robbery. Maybe there was something to recover for the bank and that something would also serve as further confirmation of the identity of the two robbers.

  As there wasn’t loot left in their apartment and they apparently left with few belongings, then their stash was likely still in the area somewhere. Natalie guessed there might be ten storage facilities in a region that size. It wasn’t that large a town and several of the smaller surrounding cities wouldn’t be large enough to support a storage facility. Natalie thought there if there were just a few storage areas, she could pursue further questioning on the behavior of their clients.

  Detective Shimoda basically considered the case closed with the twins names as the only suspects of the robbery, but she’d go one step farther and see if she could find some stolen goods, then Natalie would be satisfied with the case’s conclusion.

  She began making calls. She opened with a question of how long they were open and then asked if they had a plan for a renter to pay ahead five or ten years, then she planned to joke about as if anyone really did that and see what those conversations would shake out. She struck gold on the fifth storage facility. After her usual questions, she asked, if they had any long term clients.

  “Yes, in fact the lease was renewed just two days ago and it’s paid up for the next decade. I remember it as it doesn’t often happen in this rental business. Most people think they’ll only need storage for a year or so and then they’ll get around to throwing out stuff and they won’t need it again. This woman’s been our renter for at least seven years and now she wants another ten. She must be a pack-rat if she can’t thin out her possessions in all that time.”

  Or a bank robber, Natalie thought while the clerk babbled on.

  “Can you describe that renter?” Natalie asked when clerk paused to take a breath.

  “Thirtyish, normal weight, black hair, Caucasian, no accent, wore glasses.”

  That probably describes half the United States female population.

  “Was it one woman or were there sisters that rented?”

  “Just one woman. She is always pleasant to speak with and look at.”

  “Are you expecting her back at her storage unit soon?”

  “I don’t know. People rarely tell me when they’ll be visiting their storage unit.”

  “So she didn’t say something like see you soon or something like that?”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone and then the guy said, “No nothing like that. What’s this girl done? It’s not like I ever saw anything illegal going on there. I’d ask her if she needed a hand moving stuff and she always assured me she was lifting lightweight boxes. When she drove past the office, I never noticed that her car was piled with boxes so I assumed it was just small stuff.”

  Yeah, thought Natalie, small stuff like stolen jewelry or packs of money, but she just asked the clerk one more question.

  “What’s the name of the renter of the unit?”

  “Arielle Joseph”

  Bingo. Got you.

  Natalie thanked the clerk for his time and ended the call. Then she placed a call to the detective. She wanted to get a search warrant for the storage facility. Maybe they would find stolen goods inside. The detective thought they have a search warrant for the Michigan Troopers the next day.

  Natalie was so tempted to fly to M
ichigan to be there when they opened the storage area, but alas she stayed back in California. If the troopers opened the storage area and found any of the stolen goods, the FBI would move right in and assume control of the case. Oh well, she didn’t work cold cases for the glory, rather she worked them to bring justice to those denied it for a long time. Maybe they would find some keepsake still in the storage area that’s invaluable to the family or person from which was stolen nearly ten years ago.

  She notified the troopers of her search warrant ETA and ended her work for the day. Tomorrow could be exciting. If she found any of the stolen goods, her reputation as a detective would shoot through the roof and she likely have all the consulting cases she wanted.

  Chapter 46

  John Lee returned as promised with the perfect cache of medications. He had a good friend in the pharmacy business and he seen so many medications fail, that the friend wondered about the potency at times, but hadn’t known what to do with the idea. He had bottles that the manufacturer had sealed that he gave to John for testing in the United States. Damian had lined up a couple of testing labs in the region. He then lined up his Food and Drug Administration expert and the two journalists while he awaited the outcome of the testing lab.

  A day later John Lee had his scheduled call with Mr. Lin which was filled with promises that he was just about to capture the teenager. Meanwhile he was working with Damian to figure out his parents’ physical location. They both hoped that while Mr. Lin was distracted by the negative press directed at his company that John could swoop in and free his parents. Over the six months they’d been in custody, they had fed him various descriptions of the property they were being held at and Mr. Lee asked to speak with them during his most recent call to Mr. Lin for even a little more clarification. He’d waited while the connection was made which told him they weren’t nearby him.