by Peche, Alec
“The various warring factions in the Congo made life miserable for anyone touching the diamond industry. They killed off a few mine CEOs, and they required bribes not to harm the workers, or simply to let the workers pass unhurt on the road to the mine each day. Recently they have gotten bolder in their demands and their spies. Sadly, Laura Peeters has had so many individuals wanting her death in this past year that it all converged on her. The consortium members were tired of her taking their profits; the Congo leaders and there have been many, have wanted her dead for a long time for keeping the world’s focus on their inhumane treatment of the miners; and then there were all the politicians on her list who were at risk of being embarrassed.
“Interpol tried to reach out to Laura. We knew there was a woman running a charity with a connection to Antwerp and the diamond industry, but we didn’t know her name or even what she looked like. Thankfully, she told you her name at the restaurant, or she would have been identified as Julie DuPont. I’d had a trace on her name for probably the last decade as I was convinced that she wasn’t dead. Between the diamonds in her stomach at death and the name, many pieces began to fall in place for our secret group investigating this mess.
“Unfortunately, at the same time, we learned of the leak in the Antwerp office. I was saddened but not surprised by the leaks within Interpol. Any of the players in this diamond scheme had the funds to influence the average person’s morals.”
“Unlike Jacobs, who was forced to choose between losing his beloved wife or supplying Laura with chocolate containing nuts, Inspector Graaf had no higher motives. I had another team member delve into his finances and there are cash payments in his accounts over the last two years. He will lose his job and spend some time in prison, as will his Russian counterpart. However, at the moment we are keeping quiet about our knowledge as we need to smoke out other rogue agents. I want it all this time – the rogue agents, the consortium CEOs, the warlords of Africa, and the politicians that took bribes. I think with a little planning on our part, we can take them all down.”
“How do you plan to do that?” asked Jill.
“I planted false information in several Interpol offices over the past week. Basically it was Laura’s spreadsheet altered with different names and quantities of euros flowing. That must have been why they went after your rooms – to verify the authenticity of the documents. The document details what everyone’s bribes were in amount and for what activity. I mixed the truth and the lies.”
“You were wise to shred the initial paper copy you gave us of her disk,” mentioned Marie. “I thought your request at the time was a little strange, but then I didn’t dwell on it.”
“I think that Laura evolved over time as to how she wanted to improve the life of the miners. I’m guessing she started out thinking she could simply steal the diamonds, sell them and give the money back to the miners. However, I am sure she quickly discovered that money did not fix any long-term problems such as slavery and children being forced to work.”
“Yes she did discover that she hadn’t fixed a single social problem for the miners,” said Henrik. “I know this because I was her husband.”
Jill, Angela, and Marie had discussed Henrik’s role as Laura’s husband and how it might solve this entire case if Willems and Dubois were informed of his status. They had been in agreement that it would aid the case’s resolution, but it was Henrik’s decision to inform the two law enforcement officers. They had quickly decided that morning that he couldn’t be prosecuted for kidnapping if they refused to say they were kidnapped. She didn’t know the rules of German or Belgian law, but as long as Henrik wasn’t living on Laura’s diamond profits, he was likely not going to face prosecution.
“None of our research uncovered a marriage,” said Dubois after a long silent pause. “Do you have proof of that?”
“I have a copy of our marriage certificate for a ceremony performed in Las Vegas in the United States in my safe.” With a sad smile, Henrik said, “We met when she tried to rob me of my diamond chandelier, so you can cease your worry that everything in this house was bought with her diamond theft money. We kept separate accounts. My global security business funded my assets, and her funds from the sales of diamonds funded her efforts for a better life for African miners. And before you ask, I knew Chloe as well.”
“Well that certainly brings complications and new information into this case. Mr. Klein, I doubted that you really were a relative of Jo. Jill, how did you meet Mr. Klein and how long have you known each other.”
“We met at a restaurant last night after we left Interpol. He suggested we move here to finish the investigation and remove ourselves from harm’s way. We brought you and Willems in the case when we saw who was on the tape.”
“Somehow I don’t think that is the full story and you are withholding something from me,” said Dubois. “However, we are at a critical junction in the case at the moment and I can’t afford to dwell on that point especially if Mr. Klein has new information.”
“Please call me Henrik. Let me tell you a little about Laura. Her one significant flaw was her passion to make the world fair for diamond miners. I could not convince her to retire from the increasingly high-stakes game she was playing. It was the only bone of contention between us in our marriage. To accept a life with her, I had to accept her occupation. I used my security forces to make her world safer, but ultimately I couldn’t keep her safe. She was adamant that I would be a widower someday and so she worked very hard to keep the diamond thefts off my radar. She didn’t want me or my company dragged into her criminal history once she was gone, her words, not mine. If you did a search of this house, and you won’t, you would find her clothes, her fingerprints, and her grave, but really nothing more. One of the reasons I loved her was the passion she had for helping others.
“Sadly, she infused Chloe with the same zeal to save the miners. Chloe and I laid Laura to rest last week, and I hope to obtain Chloe’s body after the medical examiner is finished. Will you help me with that?”
“I should have checked where Laura’s body was released to; I might have found you sooner Henrik,” Investor Willems said.
“You could have checked but my path was well covered and even if you had followed Laura’s departure from Dr. DeGroot’s examination table, you wouldn’t have found me,” Henrik replied.
“Yes, I will see that Chloe is released to you.”
“Thank you.”
There was a brief moment of silence as everyone in the room thought of the futility of Laura’s approach to helping make the world a better place for the miners. She had made many improvements, but she had not saved them all.
Chapter 18
“Henrik, let’s go back a bit in the proceedings of this case,” directed Willems. “Were you aware that Laura kept an odd computer chip in her possession likely at all times to pass on in the event that she was in some kind of desperate trouble?”
“Yes when we would argue, she would talk about that chip. She obsessively updated it. In a weak moment I showed her how to do searches that would elicit the kind of information she kept in her spreadsheet – namely bribes that were traded among the mine owners, politicians, and what I would call ‘militia units’ within these mining communities.”
“Where did she do the research for that spreadsheet?” asked Willems. “Was it on the computers here in this house, or in her apartment in Antwerp or in her retail store?”
“She did her work at the retail store in Antwerp. She had all kinds of extra security on the internet line because of the credit card transactions. She thought that security would prevent her from being tracked; I had repeatedly told her she was living in a fool’s paradise. There was simply too much money and power at stake. She thought if she played the parties against each other, she would stay safe.”
“You mean the consortium did not know what she looked like or that she operated the retail store?” asked Jill. “I am impressed with her bravery that she would take these
powerful people and companies on in a game of wits – she would only stay alive if they all lived in fear of what she would reveal upon her death.”
“Laura was very successful at being unidentifiable, and that made her feel safe,” explained Henrik. “It kept her free from prison and safe from anyone who wanted to kill her. She never negotiated face-to-face. When she walked around Antwerp, she changed her appearance. If you speak to her staff at the jewelry store, you will find that she had a series of wigs that she changed frequently. She made out to the staff that it was a fashion quirk of hers. She also stole from her own shop and filed an insurance claim for the theft to keep up the appearance of being nothing more than a jewelry store owner.”
“She had some fifteen years, and perhaps your help, Henrik, in staying ten steps in front of everyone,” commented Dubois.
“I learned early in our marriage not to help Laura with her schemes. I made the mistake of showing her in great detail what was wrong with her approach to her own security. Instead of being suitably frightened, she spent the next week figuring out a way to close the breach I had shown her. After that lesson, I never again discussed her schemes. Instead I used my own security team and computer algorithms to keep her safe. We had a few near-misses that I was able to detect in advance and pass along to her. She would then reach out to the consortium members that would typically serve as the communication point between the militia folks and the politicians. If one party took her down, they would all go down, so they often policed each other as far as not killing her.”
“So what happened this time? It seemed to all disintegrate, with Laura and Chloe losing their lives and all of the parties coming out of hiding and targeting our American tourists,” Willems mused.
“I think what happened was the Russian. He had tried to convince his fellow consortium members to kill her in the past, but they would always stop him. As his production and profits waned, he was increasingly ignored by the other five members and they lost control of him.”
“How do you know about all of these events?” asked Dubois.
“Mostly I know the events because of my conversations with Chloe after Laura’s death. We discussed in great detail what to do to avenge Laura.”
“Avenge, Laura? Willems and I are not here to avenge Laura. We are here to gain enough details to seal the coffin of all of the players in this diamond game. If we could have captured Laura and Chloe alive and sent them to prison, then we would have. While I can appreciate that no one was particularly clean in profiting from the efforts of miners working in poor to awful conditions, she is first and foremost a criminal who could have chosen a different path to get her message across to the world. Furthermore, Henrik, if I could find evidence identifying you as an accessory, I would try to send you to prison as well. Just so we are clear on where my loyalties lie, they are with the law and it is a line you cannot cross.”
“Just so we are clear on who you are dealing with, I never aided Laura in a single crime. All I am guilty of is knowing her real name,” Henrik replied.
“Gentlemen, now that you have cleared the air, can we move on to figuring out who killed Laura and Chloe?” asked Jill, knowing they needed to stop wasting time.
“I suggest we break up into two groups with one group focusing on Jessica Rathbone and the other group researching our fake hotel security guard-cum-companion of Graaf,” suggested Marie. “At some point today, Angela and I need to visit Dusseldorf to renew our passports. Inspector Willems, will you provide us with your official signature that our room was robbed? I know that we do not know for sure that was when our passports were stolen, but the tape doesn’t show anyone else entering the room. We know they were there at the time of the smoke grenade, we just don’t know when they disappeared from the room. While we could say we were pickpocketed on the street, I would think the process would go faster with your assistance, even though this is Germany.”
“Yes, I can assist you with that. If you have the consulate’s number, I can call and give them my badge number to prove you have made a report to law enforcement. That is usually all they need. They’ll verify with my office that I am for real, and usually they quickly reissue you your documentation. I have always wanted you ladies to go home and I’ll do whatever I can to get you on a plane to return to the U.S.”
At least Willems offered a cheeky grin when he added the final bit, which mitigated the two women’s rising hackles.
“Back to Marie’s suggestion, while you all work on solving this mystery, I am going to visit some vineyard clients in this area,” said Nathan standing up and preparing to exit the room. “Henrik, thanks for the loan of the laptop. Would you mind if I downloaded my graphic design software on to it?”
“If you’ll tell me what you need, I’ll have my assistant, who is in the library, set it up for you. Give her about twenty minutes and then she’ll have it ready for you, as well as a car.”
“Thanks, Henrik, I’ll drop off the laptop to her and get the car key. Thank you for keeping the ladies safe. Have a great day,” said Nathan departing the room with a wave.
As no one had a better suggestion than Marie, they split into two groups, gathering intelligence on both people. Jessica had a particularly disturbing background.
Marie worked her usual magic, cutting through layers of false identities to the real Jessica, or in this case, the real Mary. Jessica was born Mary Smith in South Africa. Her parents were killed during a terrorist bombing in Pretoria when she eight years old and from there she was raised by an aunt. After high school she entered a trade college and received a nursing degree. For the next six years she worked at a series of long-term care facilities.
Marie began her report. “Five years into her six-year career, the nursing homes started sharing data and discovered that their mortality rates climbed by 400 hundred to 500 percent when she was working. After an extensive review of the medical records, they thought she might be connected to twenty to thirty deaths at each facility.”
“At each facility?” several people exclaimed at the same time.
“Yes, at each facility. So over time, she took the lives of perhaps one hundred to one hundred fifty residents. What an astounding murder rate. She was no angel of mercy, either, since she used an overdose of potassium by itself with no sedatives. It said in one of the articles that your death would be fast, in four to six minutes, but the pain excruciating.”
“Since she is running free, it means that officials have not caught her,” Dubois commented. “How did you know that Mary and Jessica are one in the same person?”
“Nick was so tired last night he forgot to tell us of his moment of brilliance,” said Angela. “When he saw that both rooms had been ransacked, he had his staff from his Brussels branch come and dust the room for fingerprints. While we were sleeping overnight, one of the sets of prints in both rooms matched her prints, which were on record from when she got her nursing license.”
Nick added, “She could have stayed in one of the rooms as a tourist recently and not be our visitor yesterday, but then why were the prints inside both rooms? The chances of her being the fake maid are very high. Also, her prints were on the safe in both rooms.”
Both Willems and Dubois nodded their agreement with Nick’s theories. There was a sense of urgency and energy in Henrik’s conference room, at the thought of not only solving Laura’s and Chloe’s murders and likely bringing politicians and diamond mine CEOs to justice, but now they might also get a mass murderer in their sweep.
“As a nurse, she would have likely had the knowledge about the empty vena cava syndrome that killed Laura,” said Jill. “I think the pathologist dusted her body for prints and ran them through Interpol, but if this Jessica was smart she would have worn gloves in the hospital, and no one would have considered those out of place. We should check with Dr. DeGroot to see what print results his office got back.”
“In regards to Chloe’s death, she was found leaning against a trash container close to the Chur
ch of Notre Dame,” said Marie. “What evidence did your crime scene people collect on her death that might indicate whether or not Jessica was there?”
“Just a moment and I’ll check on both cases, since they were investigated by the Belgian police” said Willems. “Go ahead and continue the discussion while I pull up the report on her. I am interested to see if Marie can detect where and what Jessica did after she thankfully left the nursing profession.”
Marie put two pictures up on the screen; one of Mary Smith and the other of Jessica Rathbone. On the surface they were two different people. The images were likely ten years apart at least. Everyone studied the pictures, noting the differences. She looked to be a natural blonde with very pale skin and no freckles. Looking at the two pictures, the hairline was the same, as was the creamy skin. In one, the nose was thinner, the cheeks a little fuller. In both pictures she had dimples. Overall, she looked like a friendly sort of person.
“Dimples are hard to get rid of surgically as the cheek is attached to deep muscles underneath which engage when someone smiles,” said Jill. “That might have been a vanity point for her as well. I think she is the same woman based on the skin color, hairline and dimples, but it would be interesting to see what computer software says about the two faces, if there is such a type of software.”
“As you can see from this case, an amazing number of criminals have plastic surgery,” said Dubois. “Our French headquarters developed software that was an extension of facial recognition programming about two years ago. With input from plastic surgeons, we use probabilities that a difference in a face is real or surgically enhanced to develop an overall probability that two faces are the same. While the eye socket can be changed, it is difficult to change the size or shape of the eyeball without drastically affecting vision. Teeth are also another area of match – while you can have them straightened or capped, unless you’re willing to pull out all your front teeth, you don’t change the proportions of each tooth. We’ll send these two pictures to Lyon, and we should have an answer back within an hour.”
