by Mark Hall
SEVEN
It was good and dark around ten o’clock when Chris and I slipped out of the Squadron and quickly settled into a drainage ditch that ran through the property between the twin offices and the shopping center. We lay down on the office building side of the ditch to keep a good line of sight to the two buildings.
The twin offices were lit by a series of lights that circled each building and were above each rear office door. It soon became clear that the right twin was the one most likely for us to observe. All of the rear lights were out and only the lights from the rear of the shopping center behind us gave any help at all. There were street lights across the street that helped the front but not the rear. To our advantage was a clear night and a fairly bright moon that sat right overhead. Chris motioned for me to move and we made our way crouched down in the ditch another thirty or so yards so that we were right behind the right twin building and about eighty to ninety yards from it. He looked back at the rear of the shopping center, then back to the right twin building then motioned for us to get down.
Once again, during the course of this investigation, he had seen something that I hadn’t. He was aware of something that was hidden to me. I wondered again what life Chris had before whatever happened to him. I knew involving him in these events was risky but it was a calculated risk. When involved, it was with law enforcement people that I knew. He was kept out of press conferences and interviews and pictures. As far as the general public of Macon and Houston County knew, he didn’t exist other than as the salesman at Ace Hardware in Perry.
Several hours went by without any movement near the buildings. The temperature had dropped down into the thirties and as we lay looking out at the office we could hear the traffic on Watson and the noise of good times at Kipper’s behind us. But we each had ear pieces and radios that kept us in contact with Jeff out front although none of us spoke much. Around two o’clock in the morning, Chris grabbed my arm.
“Got him” he whispered.
The second rear office door from the cul de sac that separated the twin buildings had opened slightly, maybe two feet. It was barely visible from where we were but there was enough change in the shadow caused by the moon to tell it had opened. I could only guess that in that doorway, and a few feet back, was someone looking out trying to catch any movement or noise that might be a warning. We couldn’t risk rushing him now out of fear that he would run back in the office and redeposit whatever he had. If what had been hidden in there had gone undetected for years in the midst of all the activity of that office, it might be impossible to find if he put it back. We needed him to step out from building far enough to be able to close in on him quicker than he could get back. I wondered how he got by us to get into the office in the first place.
Yet he stood just a few feet into the office and the shadows and waited. I whispered the message to the others that the door had opened but he had not stepped out yet. Jeff replied with a ‘no movement’ call which meant for everyone involved to set still and let this play out.
Chris and I stared at the back door less than a hundred yards away and waited for him to step out. Step out, I thought, so I can get a look at you. Several minutes passed and the rear door slowly closed but not entirely shut. There was maybe a foot or less opening as best I could tell. I whispered this change over the radio, “He’s almost shut the door”.
Suddenly, Jeff called out over the radio earpieces “Dean!”
A figure ran down Osigian from the Cantrell Center between the twin buildings to the front of the right twin. A loud crash followed from the front of the building and as I began to rise up and run toward the barely opened door, Chris pulled me back down.
“Wait” he said.
The rear door flew open and a dark figure ran out and headed away from the building across the vacant lot and straight toward us. He was barely visible from where we were but was clearly running in our direction. He looked as though he might run right between us when Chris grabbed my right hand with his left and we stood up slightly and tripped him across his shins. His momentum carried him clear to the other side of the ditch and our trip caused him to flip right over. He landed on his back on the other side of the ditch. I pulled my pistol and yelled for him to freeze.
Chris stood back a bit and yelled “Valdez”! He took out his light and shined it on the figure in front of us lying upside-down on the side of the ditch.
He was entirely dressed in black. Shoes, pants, shirt, the whole thing – only his face was uncovered. It was the face of a younger man, probably in his late twenties. He started to roll over to get up but thought better of his situation and put his hands behind his head, still upside down.
In his right arm was a black bag about the size of a large purse.
“We got him” I reported over the radio and in seconds Jeff and the others were with us in and around the ditch. Chris had the black bag opened and whatever was in it glittered and sparkled back at him. Captain Dean walked over and shined a light into the bag and pulled out a black pearl and diamond necklace that sparkled like a Christmas ornament.
EIGHT
“This is it, boys” Captain Dean said, “this is absolutely a Ford piece. So are those ruby ear clips. It is possible we might have just about the rest of the Ford heist in this bag plus some pieces I don’t recognize.”
Jeff walked over straight to Captain Dean, furious. “What were you doing, running out to the front of the place like that? You could have blown the whole thing! He might have put all of that right back where it was and we would never find it.”
“He was right inside the back door, looking out, wasn’t he? He might have been spooked or alerted to something outside and was on his way back in, so I knocked on the front to make him run on out the back” Dean answered, holding up the bag.
The opposite of what my grunt call did yesterday morning, I thought. My grunt in front of what might have been an old buck made him retreat. Captain Dean’s banging on the front door made this young buck move forward.
The Ninja Burglar was handcuffed and we turned to face him. “Who is this, then?” Jeff asked.
Chris answered, “This, I believe, must be the son of Alvara Valdez.”
We turned to face the man who just stood there and sneered back. He knew enough to keep his mouth shut.
“The lack of activity in the early Nineties that you mentioned, Captain Dean, was around the time that this man would have been born. It isn’t a stretch to think that the father shared with him where the rest of the Ford jewels were. You have to think that if he was born in the early Nineties, he would have been about 8 or 9 when his father went to jail and 18 or 19 when he got out for those few months before going back to jail”.
A couple hours or so later, we were sitting in the Waffle House off Houston Lake Road and talking about the past day’s events. Captain Dean was with us, having turned the jewels over to Jeff for processing.
“I guess now I really can get into coaching like I said I was when I originally retired” he said while taking a bite of waffle and eggs.
I replied, “Yep”, then turned to Chris, “You moved us down the ditch when we first settled in and I am glad you did because he ran right to us. What made you move us down?”
“Human nature” Chris answered, “I knew he would take the most direct and easiest route out of the building. If you study that lot we were in, there are a lot of uneven dips and dirt mounds all through the place. There was, though, a direct path that was flat until it got to the ditch we were in and it was in line with one of the lights on the outside of the back door of one of the stores in the shopping center, I think maybe the Party Store. Once to the ditch, he would have followed it over to the next set of office buildings or the back of the shopping center where I figure he had a car.”
“We had eyes on the place for the most part since this morning and no one saw him go in. The businesses were open and doing their thing and nobody saw this man come i
n. How did he get by us?” I asked.
“He didn’t” Chris replied, “He has been in there all day.”
“Are you serious? Why?”
“He knew that after he knocked Captain Dean here in the head that the area would be covered in police, at least for a few hours. I believe he headed for edificio gemelo derecho – the twin building on the right, immediately and hid out for the day after having busted out the rear lights. He fully intended on grabbing that bag and slipping across that empty lot to his car and back to Florida.”
“Do you really think it is the son of the Ninja Burglar?”
“I think it fits, yes. Who would Valdes trust? None of the Marshall family for sure. The police records don’t mention any family at any of his arraignments or trials. He is originally from Cuba so he either made a family here or brought them over later. In any case, he may have tried to settle down in the early Nineties when a child was born then picked it back up because theft was all he knew. And like it or not, he knew it well.”
Captain Dean turned to Chris, “Like father, like son. Chris, you have a pretty good mind for remembering cases and it also seems you know something about criminal nature to pick up the direction he’d take. Have you done this before?”
“Not exactly”, Chris grinned, “I have to say it has been a real joy to work with you, Captain.”
“Same here. It has been a long fifteen years but I think this one can be put to rest. I know we won’t recover all that was stolen but maybe we found a lot of it tonight”.
