A Taxing Death (Jill Quint, MD, Forensic Pathologist Series Book 5)

by Peche, Alec

  Taking the pizza out of the oven, Jill poured herself a glass of wine and took a slice of pizza and the wine over to her computer. She may as well eat while visiting the creepy chat room. Maybe the crazy people would drive away her appetite. A quick glance at her e-mail showed three e-mails of interest to her. Jack had worked some magic with the video feed sending her two solid pictures of the suspects. She sat there staring at them trying to find their secrets in a flat picture. She also studied them looking for facial modifications like glasses, false teeth, or theatrical putty or cosmetics that would change their appearance. She couldn't tell from the picture if they had done anything to disguise their features. In the end she dropped an e-mail to Detective Chang and Lieutenant Moss suggesting they run it through their facial recognition software. She was curious if they would find anything by the meeting the next morning.

  She moved on to an e-mail from Marie who was letting her know she could take time off and visit California to help on the case beginning tomorrow if she needed help. Jill looked at the time and decided it was not too late to call Marie.

  "Hey Marie, it's Jill. How's it going there?"

  "Can you hear that noise in the background?"

  Jill listened for a moment and then replied, "Is that thunder I hear?"

  "Yes one of those beautiful and violent summer storms. I appreciate that Mother Nature has given me the show during my waking hours instead of the middle of the night. What's up?"

  "I was just reading your e-mail and thought I'd talk the case through with you. Do you have a moment?"

  "Yeah go ahead but you may have to repeat some things so I can hear over the noise of a thunderclap."

  "So I've been keeping you guys apprised of this case. Since it is strictly one division within the Department of Revenue, I really think the killers were audited at some point by this division. I've spent some time in some chat rooms devoted to hating this taxing authority, and to say the group is unhappy is like you saying that thunder isn't making any sound. Are you able to spend some time doing your usual search of social media to see who is lurking out there? I have pictures of the guys and I think they're between the ages of thirty-five to forty-five so they are of the social media generation."

  "Yeah I can do that. So you don't want me to come to California? It's a good time for me to take time off of work."

  "I don't have to have you here to do the work for me, but it would be nice to have you here to bounce ideas off of and I always learn something from you as you go about your searches. I have to drive into Sacramento daily as I got myself on a police task force related to these murders. I don't know how long they will continue to let me be in the room since I'm a civilian but hopefully it will last until we find these killers. But what I'm trying to say is you would be alone at my house for several hours each day. Is that a problem for you?"

  "Let me see… You're asking me if I have a problem staying in a Californian vineyard with unlimited wine at my fingertips and a dog that I can take for a run. Furthermore, with Nathan around, I get some wonderfully cooked meals. Hmmm, let me think about that. Okay I'm done. I'll make flight arrangements probably out of Milwaukee to save the client money and then I'll let you know my flight plans."

  "Awesome, sounds like a plan, I can't wait to see you tomorrow! Have a great evening enjoying the thunder; you know you won't find any of that here."

  After ending the call Jill thought about Marie's plane ticket. On the one hand she didn't really need Marie here in-person to do the work, but Jill knew she always benefited from having at least one of her team members nearby. She would see how the case went and make the decision later whether to charge the client for Marie's travel. If not charged to the account, she would pick it up herself.

  She dropped a quick note to Nathan that there would be two guests for dinner tomorrow.

  The final e-mail was from Peter Kelling of personnel. At least now going forward she would remember his name. His e-mail said 'I checked the insurance for all four employees and we're dealing with two different companies. The state has several contracts and employees choose one of three health insurance companies. I've asked the two companies involved to check their records for signs of illegal access for the four employees. I won't get an answer back soon on this. The two different insurance companies have closed networks so there are at least two different physicians involved with these four employees, but I don't have that information in our records.'

  Maybe she would bounce this question off of David Gomez, a teacher she had met during a previous case when she’ solved the murder of his partner. David had superior hacking skills and perhaps if she talked it over with him she might understand how someone would go about getting the personal medical information that the killers have.

  Done with the e-mails, it was time to return to the awful 'I hate the state tax authorities' chat rooms. If she really thought about it, she needed to look at conversations from two to three months ago when the killers were still in the planning stages or perhaps were meeting for the first time. After an hour of searching for something related to these murders, or for people to talk about how they wanted to see one department dead, she was coming up empty-handed. There seemed to be a lot of talking, and fantasy of what they would do, but fortunately little action. She gave it up and went to bed hoping that the pictures would work for facial recognition.

  Chapter Nine

  It was early the next morning and Jill was putting on trousers, a short sleeve shirt, and a sweater to complete the ensemble. She was wearing clogs knowing that she would have to do an autopsy sometime that day and clogs protected her feet and were comfortable to stand in for a few hours. She had breakfast at home before leaving as the state would not be filling her tummy upon arrival like Anna Valencia had done the past two mornings. She had a big travel mug of coffee and was ready to go. She fed Trixie and left her plenty of water and the dog would have access to her house and her yard in her absence. She had checked her e-mail when she first awoke and there was an e-mail from Marie with her flight times. She would be arriving at the Sacramento airport at three. Jill hoped she would get the autopsy completed before Marie's scheduled arrival so she could pick her up and return to her house. Maybe they both could get a run in before changing and going over to Nathan's.

  Right on time, Jill entered the conference room where, much to her surprise, there was a light breakfast and a huge container of coffee. She refilled her coffee mug and offered a "good morning" to everyone around her and then the meeting started.

  "Dr. Quint, I heard from the coroner that you identified the agent that killed our fourth victim as nitrogen gas," began Lieutenant Moss. "Would you give everyone in the room an idea of how the gas was used to kill the employee?"

  "The purchase of nitrogen gas by a civilian is relatively easy as it is used for both scuba diving and the production of beer," Jill explained. "When one hundred percent nitrogen is inhaled, it displaces oxygen from reaching all of the body's organs. A victim feels dizzy, then falls asleep, and dies within ten to fifteen minutes. It's cheap and a painless way to be killed. We believe the victim was disabled by stun gun and then it would've been easy to place a nitrogen gas mask over the victim. If it had taken us an additional day to discover the victim, we likely would not have this information as nitrogen is a component of decomposition and elevated levels would not be as concerning."

  "Thank you Dr. Quint. Does anyone have any questions? No? Then moving on, Dr. Quint sent us a nice photograph last evening to run through our facial identity system. The FBI recently updated their system and searches now take approximately ten minutes to run. Unfortunately, it only has about fifty-five million photographs and the US population is about three hundred and twenty million, or about one in six people will be in the database. Sadly, our two killers came back negative. Detective Chang, do you use a different system or did you get the same result as I did?"

  "Yes Lieutenant. I got the same result – no matches," replied the detective.

>   "Dr. Quint, you mentioned you have another source for facial recognition software. Are you in a position to use that software?"

  "I gave my contact a warning that I might be asking him for help. Would you like me to run those two photos through his system?"

  "Yes, I would," was the terse response from the Lieutenant. Jill gave him a more in-depth look and decided he was likely short on sleep and stressed by the deaths of the employees it was his duty to protect.

  "I'll just drop him an e-mail right now," Jill replied. "It's a little past five in the evening in Stuttgart, so I don't know what kind of turnaround time I'll have on this request."

  "Obviously let us know if your contact is able to identify these two men. Let's move on and discuss a few more updates. All of the employees have had a quiet day and night in Reno. We don't know who was on the killers' list of targets and having removed the immediate target we don't know if other divisions or leaders in the Department of Revenue are on the list. The department has descended into chaos without staff to answer phones regarding taxpayer questions. Those left behind worry about their own safety as the gossip has reached them about what happened to the Audit Division staff. The department has seen upwards of fifty percent sick call rates with calls from the union about what's going on. It's not my headache to handle more just a description of the fallout of trying to keep people safe."

  Jill thought 'this is getting ugly; people are terrified because no one has a handle on what's going on and the hysteria is only going to spread; however like the Lieutenant, it wasn't her problem to solve'.

  Just as they moved on to discussing a search of salvage yards for the ambulance, Jill got an email from Henrik. He had some amusing comments that she would respond to later, and he had a match but it wasn't the match to any traditional license, military, or law enforcement systems.

  Jill looked up and said, "Lieutenant Moss, my contact in Germany located our two suspects on Facebook. Like you and Detective Chang, my contact is able to match the picture to traditional government systems including law enforcement, the prison system, the military, and driver's licenses among the major systems. His system then goes beyond to images on the internet. He did find a match on a Facebook page. I looked up that page and there hasn't been any activity for the past five months. It's a page devoted to a sovereign citizen group, whatever that is."

  The lieutenant looked at another officer who had been taking notes for the task force and asked him to bring the picture on screen with the computer/projector set up in the room. It took a few minutes for the computer to warm up and find the internet. The officer typed in the sovereign citizen group and the Facebook page came up on the screen. Sure enough, there were the two suspects featured on a picture that had been posted to the page a year ago. The names given to the two men were nicknames clearly by the photo tag beneath the picture. Everyone in the room sat silently stunned looking at the pictures of the two men.

  "We really need some fingerprints from these two gentlemen. I find it very difficult to believe that you could go through life without leaving an imprint on some government identification system. I think our next steps are to contact the FBI and find out what they know about this group; surely they have had interaction with them at some point. We should also work with Facebook to track down who opened this account and who the members are. We'll need a warrant to get that information out of the company. Finally we need to find that ambulance in hopes that there will be either fingerprints or DNA left behind. Does anyone have something to add? No? Then let's go start chasing leads down. Dr. Quint if you would stay behind a moment?"

  The room quickly began emptying, people at once energized that the suspects had been identified as real people, yet dissatisfied because they still didn't know who they were, puzzling over the ability to be invisible to all government opportunities to be captured on film. How did one go through life without some form of identification?

  Once the room emptied, Jill waited for the lieutenant to speak.

  "I'm impressed with your German contact. If you don't mind, I'd like his contact information. If we can secure a contract with him, we will do so. If something in his software violates US privacy standards, I'll make sure I don't investigate that. The Facebook connection makes the killers real and provides us with some helpful information although I wish we had names for these two men. More impressive has been their ability to stay off the grid through an entire lifetime."

  "Perhaps they didn't stay off the grid."

  "If they have some form of identification, we sure can't find them. Nor can the mega-computer from Germany. That tells me that they somehow managed to avoid having the usual government identities."

  "How about if these guys had the ability to change what was on the record for databases in which they were listed? For example, if I were them, I would keep my driver's license but substitute the picture listed in the Department of Motor Vehicles’ computer. With the exception of law enforcement, who looks at a picture to see if it matches the picture in their database? Or if you wore a disguise anytime your picture had to be taken, how does the person taking your picture know that you're wearing a disguise?"

  "Those are good points. I haven't heard of someone getting into the DMV system and changing data, but I'm not close to that issue. I also have not heard of anyone showing up in costume for their picture, but again, I suppose that could happen. "

  "I believe my contact in Germany does security testing for firms so you might have him check your system to see if the State of California is protected when you contact him about his facial recognition software."

  "How did you meet him again? I can't remember if you told me."

  "I can't remember if I spoke with you or someone else either," said Jill with a smile. "I was on vacation in Belgium, and a woman at the table next to me had a severe nut allergy. I interceded and she made it to the hospital alive. Then the killer slipped into her room and finished her off. I worked with the Belgium Police Force to solve the case, and towards the end I came into contact with the victim's husband. He has been forever grateful that I found his wife's killer. Since that case, he has helped me on a few others. He has a highly protected server farm on his property that he lets European law enforcement train on. Helping me also works for his business as people have been so impressed with his products that he often gets paid business out of free service up front. So he is very much a legitimate businessman and just a very nice human being."

  Jill left out a few details on that case; she felt her phone vibrate and saw the text from the Placer County Sheriff and quickly responded.

  "Thanks, Dr. Quint, you are the first civilian who has been very helpful in my twenty plus years with the Highway Patrol and this is the most critical case of my career."

  "I wish you would drop my title and just call me Jill. I think because I come at a case from a different angle that I am able to help. You're not the first law enforcement person to be surprised by my resourcefulness. Usually you would also have my team to be impressed with as well, but so far I haven't used them much. I do have a team member arriving today who is an expert at finding stuff on people from social media sites. Her day job is candidate evaluation as a human resources expert. She is much more thorough and successful at helping to identify people and their relationships than I am. She'll go to work on this Facebook clue as soon as she arrives."

  "Sorry Dr. Quint, but I work in an area that requires you to never drop a title of someone, so you'll be Dr. Quint throughout this case. If your expert finds anything overnight, would you bring her with you to tomorrow's meeting? I find it very instructive to understand how people go about navigating clues."

  "Will do. I need to head over to the Placer County Coroner's office. It appears from the text I just received that victim three's body has been exhumed and will be arriving shortly at the Coroner's office."

  They parted ways and Jill began the drive to the city of Auburn where the coroner's office was located. It was a good twenty m
inute drive uphill towards the Sierra Mountains. She loved this drive along highway 80 as it represented some of the first views of the magnificent mountains that lay ahead. Unfortunately, she would be turning off the highway before some of the best views on earth. Maybe while Marie was here, they could take a little mini vacation to the Lake Tahoe region or Yosemite; she would have to see how the case unfolded and what their workload was.

  Jill checked her watch and noted that she had about three hours before she was due at the Sacramento airport to pick up Marie. That should be plenty of time to do a thorough job on this autopsy. After she picked up Marie, they would head home to begin some serious work on this case. She also dropped a note to Anna Valencia to see if she was available for a phone update while she was driving to Auburn.

  Chapter Ten

  Entering the Placer County Justice Center, she was met by Deputy Williamson, and taken back to a conference room. He shared a simple contract for her services and it was signed by both parties. He then escorted her to the autopsy area where victim number three was waiting along with the coroner within the first examination room.

  Jill held out her hand and said, "Hello, I'm Dr. Jill Quint and I'm pleased to meet you."

  "Hello Dr. Quint, I am Trudy Wilson, the Coroner for Placer County. I understand this case might be connected to others in the area, and you believe that this should be changed to a homicide from the natural causes ruling on the mode of death."

  Great, Jill thought, this person wasn't happy to see her.

  "Actually, I believe John Garcia the coroner for Sacramento contacted you regarding similar physical findings and circumstances around the provision of CPR. The similarities, I understood, caused both you and Deputy Williamson to have suspicion that this might be related to the Sacramento case. Suspicion to such a degree that the family was contacted for exhumation which is never an easy conversation. I'm here as an independent consultant to conduct an autopsy. While I am aware of the physical findings, those marks on the victim's chest are not enough evidence to conclude that the victim suffered from electrocution, only a full autopsy will do that. Shall we proceed? I assume you'll be observing?"