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

by Peche, Alec

  "Jill, I suspect that for the remainder of my career with the FBI that you will be the most interesting civilian devoted to justice that I will ever come across. It's not just that you're amazing with autopsies, or your friends that team up with you to discover clues, but along the way you acquire additional friends who fill key holes in your organization. I say 'friends' as it is clear that you admire these people personally and professionally and the respect is mutual. Yes, that is a good idea, let's include the lieutenant."

  Jill looked a little embarrassed by Special Agent Ortiz's praise of her team and friends, so she just nodded and returned to the conference room hoping to find Lieutenant Moss and extend an invite to him.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Jerome and Allen were debriefing the night's surveillance exercise. It had gone well; they hadn't been discovered and Jerome had been able to pick the lock. Tonight they would go back and kill the doctor in her bed. Allen was bothered by the ease of it all. He had managed to avoid being caught by any authorities by staying two steps ahead. It would pay to do some research now just to make sure that the previous evening had been as easy as they thought.

  Jerome opened his laptop and contacted the sovereign citizen movement network. The login was a pain. Each time a visitor had to answer five to ten security questions depending on the mood of the server that day. Then you had to change your password. It was only good for twenty-four hours. If you took a bathroom break while searching something, bam, you were logged out by the server. The system had more security than any other system he had used in his entire life. He had followed the movement for nearly a decade starting before it was so easy to communicate because of the internet. With the advent of the internet, computer experts joined the movement making it even easier to change names and assume new identities. Currently the movement had someone in it who behaved like the Wizard of Oz. He was behind a curtain no one could see, but he was turning the movement into the Emerald City. If you needed something searched or erased somewhere in the internet universe, you simply requested the work from a particular mailbox and it was done. So far this wizard had changed identities for Jerome numerous times, and hacked into company records updating his identification with his new identity, and most recently the wizard had gotten into the minutes of the Highway Patrol and made a fun mess of those. Sometimes it was better to change than to erase. When both he and Allen had gone to work at their respective employers, they had asked to be called by their nicknames that way as their names changed in the background of human resources, the front-end – the people they dealt with every day on the job didn't notice any name changes.

  Each request that Jerome and Allen had sent the wizard was handled quickly, most of the time in under eight hours. They each had some creative skills to get into computers but they felt like amateurs when compared to the wizard. Allen had searched both the police and the Sheriff that supported the city of Palisades Valley and he had been unable to find a police report for a breakin at Jill's house the previous night. It should mean that their activities the previous night had not been discovered. Now he wanted the wizard to also take a look just to make sure he hadn't missed anything. In his past experience, things that seemed easy on the surface had a tendency to turn into a hot mess at the blink of an eye.

  With that taken care of, they went back to planning the bombing of the meeting the following week. "Allen, did you remember to ask for that day off work? My supervisor approved it this morning," Jerome noted.

  "I also got approval for next week. The supplies we need to build this bomb should begin arriving today. I have them being delivered to my mailbox that I rent at the Arden Fair strip mall. I'm going to wear a disguise for that pick up and I would like to do a surveillance run of the property to check on the camera locations. I can use a ball cap to cover up most of my face if I keep my head down and away from any camera locations."

  "That's a good plan. Let's go survey the parking lot now. We could park down the street and walk by the strip mall checking out the cameras as we go. That way our car won't be caught in any security camera footage. You have all the supplies going to the same rented mailbox?"

  "No. I have three rented mailboxes and I divided the supplies up among the three locations so maybe we could do that surveillance run on all three locations this afternoon," Allen suggested as he heard a ping on his computer. It was an e-mail from the wizard.

  "The wizard found the police report in the trash file. Someone must've warned them to not post any information about the Department of Revenue deaths, but they had already posted it and had to put it in to the trash to hide it from me. They're getting devious and very alert to our plans. It says here that Jill Quint is moving out of her house and into that of her friend, Nathan Conroy, listed in the same city. We'll have to pay him a visit. I think we should avoid the practice visit and go for the kill tonight."

  "We have never carried out any kills without a practice session first. Are you sure you want to do that? Why don't we at least drive out to the property this afternoon so we can see what we're getting into? We won't break into his house - it's more to get a layout of where we should park and walk tonight."

  "You're right, Jerome, we can at least get the lay of the land, choose a parking spot and decide where to enter his property. Let me pull a picture up on Google Earth."

  They studied the picture of a street view look of Nathan's house. It was a big one-story Spanish adobe building with beautiful landscaping and fountains in front. The two men got a sense of the land staring at the picture. Unlike Jill Quint's property, this guy had no vineyards. Instead he had several outbuildings of indeterminate use.

  "Let's go and start our surveillance run to the mailbox locations, the auditorium, and then drive to the guy's house in Palisades Valley which is an hour from here. Jerome, what disguise do you want to wear today? I think we can stay with the same disguise in all locations."

  "I think we should wear the bland look. Non-descript clothing so that if anyone was trying to describe our appearance they would have to say we look like a plumber or electrician or a delivery guy. While I have full beards and the baseball cap wigs I also have a hat that will make us look like we're bald underneath the ball cap. I also have some fake sleeves to wear that will make it look like your entire arm is tattooed. Let's take my car since we had yours yesterday at the auditorium and I'll put the fake plates on it. What else do we need?"

  "A couple pair of sunglasses would be good as well as clear plastic frames for when we can't wear sunglasses. Let's add to that - binoculars, water, and our Taser. We never know when we could be threatened."

  Jerome rubbed his hands together and said, "I am really enjoying being a member of the sovereign citizen movement. Planning these kills has brought me happiness for the first time in probably the last decade. Knowing that we're removing corrupt people who enforce the corrupt laws of any legal state is very satisfying. I only wish we could tell our story to fellow brothers of the movement, but you never know who you can trust. I really want to learn from you on how to build a bomb in case I need to do it in the future and you're not around. I mean I always hope you'll be around; you’ve been such a good friend. I haven't had such deep conversations with anyone until I met you. Have you met anyone else in the movement that you like and trust?"

  "I've had a few meetings with other people in the movement, but we haven't clicked. Most people are not as focused as I am on the movement and they bring other baggage like bigotry or religion. But those thoughts don't belong in the movement. We are very specific in our beliefs. We fight against all parts of the government that have been illegally formed from local government to state government. We are citizens of the original colonies that became the United States of America and everything that came after us was created by a conspiracy of the government. The only other person in the movement I trust besides you is the wizard. Whatever I've asked the wizard he has never let me down. The wizard has even helped me improve the computer skills I left th
e military with to a far higher level so that I can infiltrate many businesses. I would love to meet him someday."

  The two men got in the car and started their journey of surveillance. First on the list was the first mailbox location. They parked four blocks away in a grocery store parking lot. They stayed on the outer sidewalk of the strip mall looking for cameras on the outside of any of the stores, particularly those focused on the parking lot. Neither man could spot anything to worry about. They then visited a fast food outlet inside the strip mall to get another look at the mall's activity and again they saw nothing to worry about. They repeated the process for the next two mailbox sites. The only concern came from the third mailbox company where clearly there were all kinds of cameras both on the exterior and the interior of the store. Allen would have to wear a completely different disguise when he visited the third store and now that they saw the camera placement he knew where to keep his eyes focused when he walked inside. Unfortunately, given the size of the packages that wouldn't fit in his mailbox, he would likely have to speak to whoever was running the mailbox company, but there was nothing they could do about that.

  At the first mailbox company location, Allen picked up the first of five packages of supplies he required to build the bomb for next week. If any cop looked into the trunk of their car, he might be alarmed and wonder why two men were driving around with fifty pounds of black powder and fifty pounds of smokeless powder. The powders could be bought by anyone in gun and ammunition shops across the U.S.as gun owners used the powder to make their own shells and hobbyist cannonball and rocket makers also used the substances. It was the basic ingredient for a homemade bomb.

  They moved on to another visit to the large government building where the auditorium was located. Allen had obtained enough pictures of the inside from his first visit. This time he wanted to look at the outside of the building as perhaps they could place the bomb on the side or the top of the building at night with the advantage of not having to get the explosive through security.

  Studying the building, Allen said to Jerome, "I remember from my days in the military that the best bombs are placed under people. If the power of the explosion doesn't kill someone, sometimes landing on their head after being tossed through the air would do it. If we did the roof or the side, then we need the blast to kill those inside."

  "How about doing both locations?" Jerome asked. "How would you get on the roof and where would you specifically need to place the explosives on the outside of the building?"

  "That is a good question. I'm trying to think back to my training and my actual experience. We blew up abandoned buildings for practice, but it was always about placing the explosives inside a room. I can also remember throwing explosives at the side of the building when we were under fire in Iraq, and it stopped the enemy's gunfire, but I don't know if that was because of the smoke or because they were dead. My unit didn't stick around to find out. I'm also trying to think about what they taught us about the thickness of the walls and structure. As you can imagine, an American building is a much stronger construction than those in other parts of the world. If you have a flimsy structure to start with it takes a lot less powder to destroy it."

  "Since I never served in the military I don't think I can provide you with even one sentence of advice on what to do here," Jerome said wishing he could help. "Is that something you could look up online? Perhaps read up on how they make buildings implode and that might help you understand what would happen with exteriorly placed explosives. Do you have any thoughts on how we would get up on the roof? Is this something you would need help with or would you do the placement yourself?"

  "If I do a roof explosion, I'll pack the ordnance with a lot more gunpowder than I would if it was inside the auditorium. While you drive, I'm going to look up what the bombs that destroyed the building in Oklahoma City were made of - I am not looking for a bomb that size - it was huge, I think it flattened more than a city block. I just want a single room destroyed."

  "Are we finished here?" Jerome asked.

  "No, I am still exploring the idea of the roof or the side of the building. The side of the building should be pretty easy - drop a big package and run. I think we need to look at the uniform of the maintenance guys at this place and then get a maintenance cart like what they use and fill it with a bomb. If the cart sat there five or ten minutes and looked like the maintenance carts that they used here every day, no one would notice. Let's drive around the building and see if we can spot a maintenance cart on a delivery dock. We can also document all of the cameras. To reach the roof, we'll need to go up an interior stairwell. If we can figure out another way to destroy the auditorium from the exterior, I would like to avoid any more trips inside that building."

  They drove around the campus of the large government building before making their way to a loading dock. After all, a building that size required supplies to make it run. They spied the loading dock and found a convenient parking place to observe the building's activity. They watched two companies – an office supply and a food company pull up to the dock, journey inside and then come back out pulling a cart with them. Allen and Jerome took photos of the carts. After spending nearly an hour on the campus, they gleaned all the information they could think of from the visit and it was time for the one-hour drive out to Mr. Nathan Conroy's house.

  As they pulled away from the building, Allen said to Jerome, "It just makes me sick to see all those people running around without a care in the world while you and I are driven to the brink of poverty because we have to pay taxes to support those people. I would blow up the whole damn building if I could."

  "Why don't you?" asked Jerome. "Can you just increase your order of gunpowder? Then we could act like gardeners and drop a large potting soil bag and a plant in a one gallon container every five feet along the exterior walls of this office complex. Then you could build a timer to detonate all the bags at once."

  "I really like your idea, Jerome, but I don't want to take on more than we can handle. I haven't built a bomb in almost two decades. Let me have some success with destroying this auditorium and its occupants and then we'll move on to bigger targets. I like your idea of disguising a bomb in a bag of potting soil, and we'll probably use that idea for when we want to move on to a bigger target."

  Allen looked over at Jerome while they were driving trying to assess how Jerome felt about being denied the opportunity for a glorious and damaging explosion but truly he wasn't confident of his skills with explosives and the last thing he wanted to do was blow himself up. He did not want the bombing of the auditorium to be his first and his last attempt to eliminate people representing the state of California. Finally when he repeated that thought aloud to Jerome and saw agreement then the tension in the car eased.

  As with their trip the night before, the two men followed the state highway out of Sacramento and into the central valley where Jill and Nathan had homes. Soon there was nothing but fields of agriculture and then they saw large acreages of grapevines, their sign that they were approaching the Palisades Valley. Following the traffic directions from their GPS, they were soon at Nathan Conroy's home. It was the other side of town from where they had been the previous night visiting Jill Quint's house. There was a sign out front that said Conroy Designs and that had not been visible on Google Earth. They drove past it a mile or two and parked, grateful to have cell phone reception in such a small town.

  "'Conroy Designs, full service wine label and branding studio devoted to assisting winemakers with graphic materials that reflect the winemaker and his or her grapes,'" Allen said while reading Nathan's About Me page. "Wow, he has pictures of over one-hundred wine labels that he designed. I've even drank some of this wine. Oh well, there might be no more designs for him if he doesn't wake up alive tomorrow."

  "What's our game plan?" Jerome asked. "Wait until midnight and drive out here. We could slip into the house and Taser all of the occupants, or just kill Jill?"

  "The second option
-let's just kill Jill. We have nothing against anyone else in the house. We can Taser them at the start so they are disabled and then we'll do a quick nitrogen gas kill of Jill and be out of the house in twenty minutes."

  "They'll see us but then again they saw us last night when we visited Jill's property. We should still wear a disguise, but I think they'll know who we are. So we park on the street and climb over a side fence into Conroy's backyard, then I will pick the lock into the house, and we will head into the bedrooms with the Taser. Are we expecting just the two of them at this house?"

  "Yes and since we don't know if they are sleeping together, let's plan on heading to the master bedroom first. If they're both there, then we quickly Taser both of them and put the gas to Jill's face. We may have to Taser the guy a second time just to give us a clear path out of the city. We don't want him calling the police before we even get off the property."

  "Sounds like a plan," Jerome enthused. "I'll drive by Conroy's house once more and then we'll head back home. We'll have a long night tonight after the long one last night."

  They headed back into the city with Allen making a list of what they needed for tonight's assignment – black clothing, the Taser, a nitrogen gas cylinder with mask, the lock pick kit, and gloves. Both men felt supremely confident that they would kill the insufferable Jill Quint M.D. that night.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jill had facilitated connecting Henrik's engineers with the FBI and Jill, Marie, Moss, and Ortiz were now bystanders to a geeky conversation that made absolutely no sense to any of them. They could tell the conversation was moving forward as it became a case of dueling computer keyboards with one person typing away furiously, then the other, buffeted by conversation spurts in between. By the end of ten minutes of conversation, Jill was working on other things. When they were done with business, the two women were going to rent a kayak and paddle the American River. It was filled with snow melt, so even though it was blazing hot in Sacramento, the river would be cool.