The Morelville Mysteries Collection

by Anne Hagan

  Back upstairs, the guys had turned the lights on. The two men were seated, cuffed in their jockey shorts on the sofa. Treadway was applying a compression bandage to the shoulder wound I'd given Pearson. Dana and the two techs were looking on. Looking at Dana, I spread my hands then I moved to the garage door off the eating el and peered into the space that was so packed with stuff, there was just enough room for Emery's compact car. There were no dogs in the garage either.

  Marching back into the living room I looked straight at Wayne Emery and demanded, “Where are the dogs?”

  “What dogs? Ain't no dogs here...any dumb ass can see that!”

  “The two of you were observed taking two dogs yesterday. You brought them here. They didn't leave here. Where are they?”

  “You're a crazy bitch. Can't believe you come bustin' in here over dogs we ain't even got.”

  “Process this scene,” I said to my deputies and the two techs. “I want everything collected; drugs, money, jewelry, guns, dog food...everything.”

  At my mention of jewelry and guns, Wayne Emery began to twitch involuntarily. The look in his eyes told me all I needed to know.

  A half hour later the team had turned up a few guns including one of the missing ones we identified by serial number and some propane fired melting equipment showing residue of having been used recently. I had it all bagged and tagged. With the gun find, I knew we had him but I couldn't help feeling let down that there wasn't more here.

  “Sheriff, come look at this,” one of the techs called out from the garage. I found him peering into a small duffle bag in the trunk of Emery's car. “What do you make of this stuff?” he asked. The bag contained a professional lock picking set and several small pieces of unusual looking electronics equipment. I picked one up with a gloved hand and whistled as I examined it.

  Dana, who was going through boxes stacked haphazardly in the eating ell where all the melting equipment had been set up, poked her head out into the garage and, seeing what I was holding, came right over to me.

  “What do you make of that?” I asked, handing it to her.

  She turned it about in her hand and then dug into the bag, rooted around and pulled out three other pieces. After closing the trunk, she gingerly put the pieces down on the lid and lined them up. Those first two go together, more or less. They're to jam signals like for camera feeds and, if you know what you're doing, even for infra-red devices.”

  “Like lasers?” I asked.

  “Some older ones but more like for electronic eyes...motion sensors.” She picked up the third piece she'd laid out. “This works sort of like black light works after you've sprayed luminol. It will pick up fingerprints off a keypad.”

  “So they were using it to see which keys were being pushed on the alarm systems after they picked a lock and gained entry? Wouldn't the system register the attempt if they pushed them in the wrong order?”

  Dana nodded. “That,” she said, “is where I think this fourth piece comes into play. They use the first and the second one to jam, pick the lock, use the third one to figure out the keys used on the pad and then program the forth piece with the keys and it somehow breaks the combo. I've seen something like it before but only once, when I was at Quantico for some training while I was with customs...after my days in high end security.”

  “Quantico? Are you telling me this is government equipment?”

  Dana looked thoughtful. She took several long seconds to frame her response. Finally she said, “all of this is 'commercially' available – I use that term loosely – to anyone that has the money to buy it. It isn't cheap...it's far from cheap.”

  “How much are we talking, ballpark?”

  “This little item right here,” Dana held up the code breaking piece, “I'd say upwards of ten grand.”

  I just stared at her. The tech who was still standing with us did too.

  Where in the hell did these two losers get the money to buy equipment like this?

  ###

  Dana

  After identifying the electronics for Mel, I had to get out of that little hovel of a house and take a breather.

  Wayne Emery was a bachelor and it showed. The place was a mess. It looked like all he ever did there was party and melt down the jewelry he stole. There were mostly empty boxes everywhere too. It looked like he'd been going around stealing packages off of people's porches and selling off the contents.

  The only thing we didn't find was dogs or any evidence of dogs...

  When I got outside I found the dog warden's vehicle sitting at the end of the driveway. Might as well go and tell him his services aren't needed.

  He got out of his truck and met me half way.

  “Chet Hearn,” he said, extending his hand.

  “I'm Dana, part of the, um, crime scene team.”

  Until he looked at me funny, I'd forgotten I still had my vest on with 'CBP' emblazoned across it.

  “You can probably take off Mr. Hearn. There aren't any dogs here.”

  “Really now?” He looked suspicious.

  I nodded and pointed toward the house. “Be my guest if you want to take a look but there are none inside. We were sure they brought two here yesterday and they haven't left the house but...nothing.”

  “That's funny because I'm getting a GPS tracking signal from somewhere near here.”

  “For one of the dogs?”

  “Yes for one of the dogs. A show dog that was reported by the Sheriff last week. Either the collar is somewhere around, minus the dog, or the dog is fairly close by.”

  He walked down to his truck and came back with his phone. “Look,” he said, pointing at the screen. “I've been getting a faint signal ever since I arrived on site. It wasn't hard to find you guys even though nobody called me. I followed some dame in the Sheriff's truck there that peeled out of a store lot and zoomed over here.”

  “That 'dame' was me,” I told the man.

  He didn't appear the slightest bit sheepish. “This may be something; it may be nothing,” he continued. “If they took the collar off and it’s just laying around here somewhere, this is worthless.”

  “Let's go then.” I lead Hearn into the house.

  He stopped me as soon as we got inside the door. “It's weaker inside, see?”

  I looked at his phone and saw that he was right. “Let's go on through to the backyard. There isn't much to see there but it's light out now so we can probably get pretty close to that collar.”

  Mel caught my eye as we were passing through to go out the kitchen door at the back of the house. “One of the dogs that's been taken had a GPS collar,” I informed her.

  She nodded to me then called out, “Mason, go with them.” Janet Mason fell in behind us.

  We went out the back door and into the yard. Emery lived in an older subdivision that was made up of small houses but, typical of semi-rural communities in the 1950's and '60s, his lot was deep.

  The front half of the back lot had been somewhat cared for over the summer months. The grass was now the dead brown of late fall but it was mowed short. As we trudged through, trying to determine if the signal was getting stronger, the grass got higher and turned completely to weed where there weren't trees on the furthest reaches of the lot.

  Wayne Emery's property backed up to woods and there, at the tree line, we got the strongest signal we'd had. Hearn switched on a Google Earth function and zoomed out a little bit to see what was around. Through the trees several hundred yards were farm fields and then farm houses beyond. The signal was really strong.

  Hearn moved fifty yards into the trees and started casting about, looking at the ground. He stepped several paces to his right as we watched, bent and retrieved a collar. “Got it,” he cried.

  “Just great,” I muttered to Janet. “A collar but no dogs.”

  “Bet if we drive around over there, we're going to find our dog,” Hearn said as he trudged toward us and pointed through the trees. “Somebody walked one through here and removed this while t
hey were at it.”

  Janet and I followed the warden's truck in Mel's SUV with me driving since I still had the keys. We left the little sub-division and entered the rural area. After passing a couple of houses, we paused near a barren field then started up again and turned right down the next access road headed toward the back side of the wooded area between Emery's place and the farms on this side.

  “Where in the hell is he going?” Janet asked into the silence between us.

  “Damned if I know.”

  She looked at me and grinned.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “At least you're not as god awful formal as the Sheriff.”

  “Being nice is a part of Mel's job. It was never a part of mine.” I smiled back letting the other woman know it was a truth and not a dig at her.

  Hearn stopped in front of us, got out of his truck and walked back to my window. “Ladies, my grandpa used to bring me hunting up this way when I was a boy. I remembered on the way around to this side; there's an old cabin back through those trees. It used to belong to a friend of pap's who's long since passed on. Don't know who it belongs to these days or even if it's still there but I'm betting it is and that's where the dogs are.”

  Mason radioed Mel with our location and then turned to me, “You should probably wait here.”

  “Nope, I'm good to go,” I told her and, to prove it, I swung open the driver's side door, stuck my leg straight out and un-holstered my trusty old back-up weapon. We dismounted and followed Hearn down an old, ill-used path through the trees.

  “If anyone was bringing dogs back here, they were definitely coming and going from Emery's side,” Janet whispered.

  We were being quiet but, apparently, not quiet enough. Once we'd gone about 130 yards or so, dogs started barking...several dogs. Chet Hearn turned and gave us an 'I told you so' look.

  I took charge from there, ordering the unarmed man behind us. Guns at the ready and split about 20 paces apart with Hearn following several steps behind me, we came through a thicket and upon a small cabin.

  Inside the cabin the barking became intense because outside the cabin, on the rickety front porch, a man stood, arms raised, begging “Don't shoot, don't shoot!”

  ###

  “Who else is inside?” Janet quizzed the man on the porch.

  “No one Miss, I swear. It's just me, come to feed the dogs.”

  “What's your name?” she asked him.

  “Am I in some kind of trouble?” he wanted to know. “I just come to feed the dogs in the morning and clean up here a little before I go to work.”

  “Your name please?” Janet moved forward and mounted the little porch.

  The man refused to say anything else. When she got nothing else out of him, she cuffed him, read him his rights and frisked him. Finding his wallet, she checked his ID.

  “Louis Sylvester,” she called out.

  “Doesn't mean anything to me,” I told her.

  Inside, in kennels, we found eleven dogs. There were multiple empty kennels too. Boo wasn't in any of them. I was distraught. I don't remember a thing after that.

  ###

  Mel

  I showed up at the cabin with one of the crime lab techs to photograph all the dogs for evidence.

  Dana cornered me demanding to know where Boo was. Taking pity on her, I went to Sylvester who Mason had cuffed and put in the back of my SUV until patrol arrived, to try and reason with him.

  “Mr. Sylvester, we know this isn't all of the dogs that have been taken. If you cooperate with us, this will go a whole lot easier for you.”

  At first, he was defiant and just kept repeating that he needed to get to work but, when I persisted, he finally decided he better start talking.

  “This is just extra, pick up work for me. All I do is feed and care for the dogs for Wayne. He lives a few doors up from me and my family.”

  “Where does Wayne get the dogs?”

  “I don't know where they come from and I stay out of it. Wayne pays me good. I got kids to feed.”

  “The dogs in there, is that all of them?”

  Sylvester looked away from me. “Yes,” was all he said.

  “Have there been others?”

  Still not looking back, he said, “They come and they go. I told you, I stay out of it.”

  He looked at me been then cast his eyes to the floor of the vehicle. He looked up as I asked, What about a Boston Terrier; a little black and white dog? Has there been one of those?”

  His eyes shifted left and then back. “No.”

  He's lying...

  Chapter 21 – Joy

  Tuesday morning, December 23rd, 2014

  “Here's the thing; the two yahoos down there in the lockup don't have a pot to piss in between them. They're stealing high end jewelry and firearms from well protected estates using equipment there's no way they could afford to buy and they're wandering around, taking high end dogs that they don't know a thing about and then trying to figure out how to sell them off without appearing suspicious. They didn't come up with all of this stuff up on their own.”

  I had Harding and Mason both in the conference room along with the DA and I was on a roll. “Somebody bankrolled these two initially, has been feeding them targets, and is benefiting from their heists. We need to break them down today, figure out who that person or those people are, and we need to do it before they're arraigned.”

  The DA said, “The bad news is, they'll be arraigned this afternoon and they have legal representation. You'll be lucky to get another word out of them before their bail is set. Everyone wants out of the courthouse no later than 4:00 today. It will be a ghost town over there tomorrow and through the holidays.”

  I blew out a breath in disgust. “I thought we’d have more time.”

  “How'd they get legal aid over here so fast?” Shane asked him.

  “They didn't. They have a high dollar mouthpiece from Moody, Pierce out of Columbus.”

  I did a double take. “Moody, Pierce, Rallingsford, eh?” I thought about that for several seconds. “Let me guess, is their lawyer, Michael Oberle?”

  The DA looked at his notes and then nodded, “How'd you know?”

  “Lucky guess. Do me a favor and do what you can to delay their release. If you have to, tell the judge in open court that there’s a conflict of interest. Those two will be long gone overnight if we let them walk out of here today.”

  “I can’t just go in there and declare something like that Mel without something to back it up! You’ve got to give me something.”

  “Lacey Oberle, one of their victims, is their attorney’s wife.”

  “Accident or coincidence?” He asked me.

  “Neither.”

  “How stupid do these people think we are?”

  ###

  Tuesday Afternoon, November 23rd, 2014

  Morelville, Ohio

  “No terrier pups Silas?”

  “No, no. It's too soon to breed her again. Much too soon.”

  I was torn. I walked around the little kennel building looking at the other dogs available. Given the time of year, there wasn't much. There were a couple of lab pups not yet weaned but the note on their pen said they were spoken for anyway.

  Moving on, I watched a pen full of basset hound puppies. They were curious little guys and adorable but I just didn't get the right feeling from them. I continued to the last pen in the kennel. There I found two weaned pugs.

  “Silas, could I hold a pug please?”

  “Which?” he asked, walking over to me. “There's a male and a female.”

  “Female, I think.”

  Silas entered the pen and picked up one of the two dogs that immediately began nipping at his pant legs. He came to the edge of the enclosure and handed her out to me.

  The little ball of fluff was so tiny, I could hold her in the palm of my hand as she nuzzled against my neck. I held her out and stared at her face. “Look at you with your wrinkly little head and your curly tail; you're
perfect.”

  Looking over at Silas, who wasn't able to maintain his usual polite and reserved demeanor but, instead, was grinning like a small child, I said, “I'll take her.”

  “Of course you will,” he replied. “Will you need anything else?”

  Fifteen minutes later I was walking out of the feed mill shop with the pug in a carrier that would still fit her when she was full grown and a couple of chew toys. A young Amish boy followed behind me toting a 50 lb sack of puppy kibble like it was a 5 lb sack of flour.

  I placed the carrier on the passenger seat of my truck, the opening end facing the driver's seat. As I pulled away from Silas Yoder's place, I told the pup, “You're going to help me make Dana very happy.”

  ###

  “Mrs. Sylvester?” I asked when a woman answered the door.

  She looked me up and down and, as she answered me, her lower lip trembled slightly, “Yes officer? My husband...he's at work.”

  “Can I come in ma'am?”

  She swung the screen door open so I could step past her into her clean but modest home. I was greeted instantly by three boisterous young boys and one Boston terrier puppy who I knew recognized me. Boo jumped at me excitedly but I didn't stoop to pick her up just yet.

  Louis Sylvester's wife was talking again. “Louis' brother put up his bail last night. He was lucky to get it set so fast. He went to his job today...his legal job.” I could see the fear in her eyes. “He’s a good man. He was just trying to give the kids a nice Christmas.”

  There was a small tree on a table top in one corner. It was decorated nicely but devoid of any sort of presents underneath. The oldest of the 3 boys in the room couldn’t have been more than eight. I seriously doubted their Christmas would be the sort of blowout bash my niece and nephew were accustomed to.

  “Mrs. Sylvester,” I said to her, “we know your husband wasn't involved with stealing those dogs...or this one.” I pointed at Boo and scooped her up off the floor where she’d been brushing back and forth against my pant legs. “I've already asked the DA to go easy on him. That’s why he’s not still sitting in jail with those other two men. That’s not really why I’m here though.”