by Jerold Last
"Son of a gun!" I said out loud to no one in particular. Juliet may have found us the candy man who was supplying recreational drugs to the RV crowd on the dog show circuit. All of a sudden, for the first time, I had circumstantial evidence the murders might be directly linked to the original job the AKC had originally hired me to do. The judging, the drugs, and the murders could all be connected. The AKC’s revenue shortfall could be due to disillusioned dog owners dropping out of competition because of unfair judging by the two dead judges, and perhaps by other judges as well. The vague sense of something being wrong with the judging might be collateral damage from the active and lucrative recreational drug scene ongoing at these shows. What kind of corrupt judge wouldn’t give their drug dealers preferential treatment in the show ring?
All of that money the AKC was paying us to chase shadows may have finally led us to something tangible to investigate. It made me think solving the two murders might actually be related to what the AKC was looking for in the first place. When things go wrong in the drug world, murders happen.
Going forward, the murders were likely to have a further negative impact on attendance at the dog shows, and therefore on revenue coming to the AKC. It should make the AKC very happy indeed if we solved them and showed the spectators they were safe. For the first time since we’d started the dog show circuit with Juliet, I had a sense of actually knowing what I was doing and the beginnings of a real plan for what we should do next.
None of this theorizing meant that the show lead scent Juliet had tracked to the Schaefer’s RV, and to Albert Schaefer himself, wasn't a clue to the identity of the killer. However, it made a lot of sense to investigate whether the drugs that were so freely available at the shows were a motive for the two murders. The dog shows provided a convenient gathering place for potential customers with plenty of cash and time on their hands in the evenings. A lot of money was changing hands in this profitable market for recreational drugs. In my experience, where there's easy money to be made somebody will always find a way to exploit the situation.
This train of thought brought me to wondering about the possible drug connections between all of these present and former West Texans meeting again at the California dog shows. Like the Sherlock Holmes story with the famous dog that didn't bark in the night, it seemed more suspicious that none of the dog show participants from West Texas had been arrested for recent drug dealing than it would have been if they had been arrested regularly. With their records, all of them should have been on someone in law enforcement’s radar. The lack of any recent record of arrests for selling pot, crank, and crack during the intervening years among all of these shady characters suggested some powerful protection going on behind the scene here. In West Texas along the turbulent and notoriously leaky Mexican border, the source of the protection could be either the bad guys or the good guys. The bad guys were the drug cartels, while the good guys were the federal law enforcement agencies, like the DEA.
I forwarded the e-mail from Detective Callahan to Vincent with a covering note, asking him to work his computer magic and see if he could amplify the sketchy parts of this scenario. I also asked if he had a friend at the Drug Enforcement Agency or the CIA who could add to our available data. I was especially interested in whether the Schaefers' apparent immunity from the local law over the last couple of decades might indicate that they were DEA informants or had protected status for some other reason.
My timing was good. I finished all of this just in time to watch Bruce and Juliet enter the ring for the Sporting Dog Group judging.
Chapter20.A stalker unmasked
An excited Vincent greeted me as I entered the office Monday morning, after the drive back from Vallejo the night before. "I think we've found something. I love the three-hour time difference in Washington, D.C. When I send a request for something at the end of the day here, I sometimes actually have an answer waiting for me when I get to work the next morning. In this case, I got some answers from my contacts at both the DEA and the CIA. Claro. You guessed exactly right. The Schaefers are indeed confidential informants for the DEA and protected by the agency from the local law enforcement groups. According to my CIA contact, it's more than just keeping the Sheriff's deputies off their case. Claro. The DEA is actually bankrolling them as mid-level drug dealers to troll for bigger fish. Albert and Sadie get to sell their drugs locally in West Texas and on the dog show circuit, courtesy of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government.”
Vincent stood up. He looked like he was ready to pound on his desk in frustration. "You know what? That really pisses me off."
I was suddenly getting a headache. I rubbed my eyes and head. "Did you find out anything else I should know about?"
Vincent calmed himself a bit and sat back down. "Claro. Yes I did. The CIA connection says there's a lot of suspicion and no actual proof that both of the dead judges, Krause and Guerrero, were connected with the Mexican drug cartels, probably as fairly high-level drug dealers in their regions of Texas and Arizona. Krause seems to have had ties with the Sinaloa Cartel, while Guerrero was apparently in bed with the worst of them, The Zetas Cartel. There's a lot more detail stuff about who knows whom, but that's the short summary.”
The plot was thickening. I turned to look directly at Vincent. "I've got another hunch. Check all of the dog show winners in every AKC event, from the puppy classes in breed through best of breed, group, and show, judged by either Krause or Guerrero over the last three years. Look for any patterns you can find. Start by matching up the winners with who owned or bred the dogs, and use your imagination after that. All of this information is on-line and publically available via a site called infodog.com. Anything you can’t find on Infodog will be somewhere on the AKC site, even if it isn’t organized quite as conveniently. You'll just have to download the pertinent data and look for correlations."
Vincent looked even more excited, if that was possible. "I've got some fun software to do the hard parts for me. I just program it to look for key words on the web site. Claro, I can have this done for you by the end of the afternoon. Would you like to buy me dinner while we look over the results?"
That was easy, thanks to our Beverly Hills Nanny and dog trainer. "It's a deal. Plan on coming home with me for one of Bruce's patented dinners. You haven't seen Suzanne in a while and she's been asking about you. We can get eight eyes on the results and double our chances to see whatever jewels might be buried among the doggy litter."
I called Bruce and Suzanne to warn them we’d have company for dinner and got back to work. After hanging up I phoned Harold Carswell in New York using his personal cell phone number. Even with the three-hour difference in time zones, it was still early enough in the day in New York City to catch him at work. Once the social amenities were finished, I told him I didn't have anything in particular to report, but I needed some information. I asked him to keep my request completely confidential.
A short pause was followed by "Don't worry. I can respect your confidences."
That sounded like the right answer, but I wondered a bit about the pause. Maybe this was typical CEO behavior---think through all the angles before you answer. Whatever, it was time to ask my question. "Did any of your staff that we met in New York City object to hiring me for this job, or vote against hiring me at crunch time?"
Another pause, but it was longer this time. "Now that's a strange question. Is there something you should be telling me?"
Clearly Carswell was stalling while he thought through the implications of honestly answering my question. I made a note to myself, he was definitely a cagy bastard and it was a good thing we’re on the same side. "No, not now. I just want to dot all of the I's and cross all of the T's, before I prepare my first report."
No pause this time. "I think this is the sort of information that a real gentleman keeps confidential."
I noted that he still hadn’t answered my question. Could there be some kind of a
genda here, or was he just protecting his employees like an honorable boss should? It was time to be a little less deferential and more to the point. "No, it's the sort of information you give a private investigator that you hired when he asks for it and you don't give him a hard time about it."
There was another long pause while he considered what I said. Finally, he seemed to make a decision and the floodgates opened. "Still a bit feisty, are we? OK, we'll do it your way. The vote to hire you was four in favor, three against. The no votes all said they were concerned about the cost. The three who voted no were Nathan Forrest, Hunter Lodge, and Rocket Rosswell. In addition, even though he voted yes for hiring you at crunch time, during our discussions before the vote Stanley Morgan expressed a great deal of doubt about the wisdom of hiring you. He thought you were the wrong man for the job, based upon what he called ‘your undistinguished record’ and the lack of input from the Board members in the preliminary selection process.”
He paused for a few seconds before asking, “Does any of this information mean anything to you?"
"I don't know yet. But I think things are coming to a head here, and I appreciate your information. I should be back in touch soon."
We said our good-byes and hung up.
At dinner that night at our house, Bruce prepared a heart healthy and flavorful meal to honor Vincent's long residence in Chile, baked Chilean Sea Bass in a fresh salsa, baked yams, and a large salad. A crisp chilled Washington State Riesling complemented the fish nicely. Dessert would be fresh baked apple pie a la mode. We were all sitting around the big dining room table. Suzanne and I sat across from each other, with Vincent and Bruce sitting between us. Robert sat in his high chair between Suzanne and Bruce. Juliet lurked under the table to pick up any food Robert or an adult might drop towards her. Bruce quadrupled up on jobs as cook, waiter, nanny, and detective. He juggled all of these tasks with grace and aplomb.
The first half of the meal consisted of social niceties. Vincent updated us on his family. His two sons were at UC San Diego and UC Berkeley, doing very well, and his daughter was graduating this year from Santa Clara University. Robert's thus far less extensive, but by no means less important, achievements were appropriately noted, as were Juliet's.
The second half of the meal and dessert were used to talk business, and it turned out we had a lot to discuss. Bruce and Suzanne put Robert into his playpen in the family room and returned to the table. Juliet stayed with Robert to make sure he was protected from any monsters that might sneak in while Bruce wasn’t on guard. As evidenced by the occasional barks and gurgles, they seemed to be entertaining each other quite well.
Vincent sipped some wine and leaned towards Suzanne, who had a pen and pad of paper to scribble random notes. "Just to update all of us so we're on the same page, I found some very heavy drug connections in this case. The Schafers are both mid-level drug dealers and protected DEA informants, while the murdered judges were each connected with a different major Mexican drug cartel. Claro. Interestingly, both judges and the Schaefers lived in the same small town in West Texas at the same time, when they were younger. Between drug deals and dog shows they had to know one another. Claro, it's a good guess the killings are tied in some way to the drug dealing. Bruce tells us recreational drugs are passed out like candy at the parties after the shows, and as I understand it, the AKC hired us because something seemed to be wrong at the dog shows. I assume all of this is interrelated.”
Vincent took another sip or two of his wine and turned toward Bruce, looking directly at him. "Roger suggested I look a lot more closely at which dogs were chosen as winners when either of the two murdered judges were working at a show. I have some special software left over as a souvenir from my CIA days that isn't standard issue for police forces. It lets me do some tricks with very large data sets, so I can sometimes find things the police can't. This seems to be one of those times. Claro. My program looked at the winners in every AKC-sponsored event judged by either Krause or Guerrero in California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, or Washington from the smallest puppy classes through best of breed, group, and show over a span of three years. It matched up the winning dogs with who owned, handled, or bred the dogs that won. Guess what I found? There was a significant and moderately strong correlation between who was the Chairman or Chairwoman of the local sponsoring kennel club and whose dog went "Winners Dog" or "Winners Bitch" in the competition. There was also a weak, and not quite statistically significant, correlation between a dog belonging to the local club chair and its winning "Best of Breed."
Suzanne, Bruce, and I shared a brief laugh, which I explained to Vincent. "So all of the anecdotal bitching by the owners and handlers might have a basis in fact. A few of the judges, like Krause and Guerrero, do pay tribute to whoever invited them to their lucrative gig at the dog show. That is very funny. I'll have to include this in my report to Carswell, even if it does only look at the behavior of two specific judges, who we already know were crooks."
Looking briefly at his notes to refresh his memory Vincent continued. "Claro. Something else very interesting popped up. Over time, there's a statistical probability that any specific dog will win at a specific event. If we add up the total number of dog shows a specific dog has entered over the years, then factor in all of the judges the dog has encountered, we can calculate the "average chance" for this dog to win, pretty accurately and very precisely. Within a small margin of error, we can assign each dog that competes at AKC dog shows a specific average chance to win an award. The owners can skew these results a bit by picking which shows to enter, or not enter, their dogs into based on whether the judge has favored the dog in the past or not. However, the bias introduced into the calculation by owners picking which judges to show under is not a major source of error as long as the owners behave consistently. Based on my statistical analysis, several of the dogs owned by Hunter Lodge, the AKC comptroller, won significantly more often than they should have when Krause or Guerrero were judging."
Vincent, with a good sense of the dramatic, paused briefly to let that little piece of detection sink in.
"Do you think you might have seen a similar correlation with any invited judge from Texas or Arizona, Vincent?" asked Suzanne, who knew quite a bit about statistics and the scientific method.
Vincent smiled a big grin. "Good question, Suzanne. I thought about that too. So as a control, I picked a dozen more judges with addresses from the southwestern states or Mexico, more or less at random, and ran them through the same analysis. Two of them showed this same pattern of correlation as Krause and Guerrero, while the other ten didn't. What makes those two judges very, very interesting is they're the same two judges who didn't show up at the Golden Gate Show where Orval Krause was murdered. Their names were in the program as the judges for the show, but there were footnotes on the web site flagging the substitutions. If I remember correctly both judges were replaced by women who had addresses in the San Francisco Bay area. I think we can theorize their visa problems arose because Hunter Lodge knew Roger would be there. To avoid giving him anything to work with, Lodge may have cancelled the fixed competition portion of the competition so as not to give Roger the chance to see a crooked judge in action. The odds of those two specific judges being the only ones out of a panel of twelve potential judges not to show up for their shows by random chance are too low to believe this was a coincidence!"
I looked over at Vincent and Suzanne while I reacted to these new observations. "It never ceases to amaze me how arrogant the average crook is, and how often they make the stupidest mistakes because they're greedy and want it all right now. I had another idea I wanted to check out too. I started wondering whether Suzanne's stalker was really a sexual pervert or whether he might have another motive for trying to scare her. I'm sorry, Suzanne, but the possibility that you were irresistible to one of the seven older men who run the AKC after just an hour or two at dinner seemed less likely to me than that someone in that group didn't want me investigating those dog shows
too closely. I called Harold Carswell to ask who voted against hiring me when he put the suggestion to his advisory board. Three of them voted against hiring me. Forrest, Rosswell, and Lodge, were the “no” voters, while Stanley Morgan seemed to be ambivalent. It looks like Lodge's name keeps coming up, over and over, at or near the top of our suspect list.
It was my turn to enjoy a moment of dramatic announcement. I paused a bit to enhance the suspense before telling them my plan for dealing with the stalker. "If my theory is right, Lodge sent the flowers and plants, but his motive wasn't stalking you, it was trying to divert me from learning what we've just found out thanks to Vincent’s computer skills. I've thought a little bit more about what we can do to see that he's punished for his stalking escapades. I picked up some vibes from Carswell back in New York. He doesn't completely trust his staff, and may not be surprised if one of them was mixed up in something criminal. We know Lodge is too greedy for his own good, from his previous job history. Given that Lodge is the comptroller, I'll suggest to Carswell the AKC runs an in-depth audit to look for any embezzlement or diversion of funds."
