Nothing Done in Secret

by Scott Edwards

  “Hmm. What about his parents?”

  “That’s the other big issue. From what I can tell, he doesn’t have any adult in his life that cares about him. Father long gone. Mother works nights and leaves the kid alone most of the day. His grandmother seems to spend her days in a fog from medication.” Moffat thought to himself, at least until I saw her this morning. “His aunt and uncle didn’t seem to have much time for him either. Well, the aunt gave him gardening jobs at her home. That was something, I guess.”

  “How did they get the gun away from him?”

  Moffat described his vantage point and the crucial moment when Aaron turned the corner and entered the walled-in patio with the trapped students.”

  “I saw him shake the bullets out of the chamber. But for a moment I had to prepare to stop him if he threatened the students.” Moffat relived those seconds. It almost seemed worse in this reliving than it had during the actual experience.

  Jean realized what her husband was telling her. She felt such sympathy for Aaron and Alex that she started to choke with emotion and could not speak. She rose and walked to the back of the seat, massaging her husband’s neck and shoulders.

  Moffat told her of his admiration for De la Peña’s performance and that of the policewoman. He wondered to himself if Melanakos had someone to decompress with or if she was working undercover right now.

  Jean slipped away and Moffat sank into his thoughts. The need for quick progress on the Davies/Price Task Force and the lack of progress on the Gillis case crossed his mind. He cataloged what should have been accomplished by the team by tomorrow morning’s meeting and considered what they would plan for the next days. With the limitation of manpower and the urgency he wouldn’t normally have given himself the evening off. Maybe I’m too old for this, he thought. Then, with a slight chuckle, he thought of how exhausted De la Peña had looked when they said good night. (Actually, at that moment, De la Peña was at Whelan’s Pub with Nicole Davies and three other singles from the apartment complex unwinding with beer, laughter and a bit of dancing. Moffat only learned this casually, several weeks later.)

  Jean had reentered the room. “Mind racing?”

  Moffat nodded. “I’ll be done in a minute.” He made a mental note to lead the team in a discussion of what the twenty-four cases could have in common. A brainstorming session, they called it in training. Next he decided he would set aside sometime to plan a confrontation with Cheryl Haugen. That was enough. He leaned over and hugged Jean.

  “I love you, Dear.”

  ~ ~ ~

  CHAPTER 22

  Tuesday, May 16

  At seven thirty Tuesday morning De la Peña entered the conference room carrying a large coffee and a breakfast sandwich, picked up at the drive thru on the way in. The rest of the team had assembled and were chatting in subdued voices. Moffat arrived less that a minute after De la Peña. The sergeant noticed, with some envy, that Moffat looked well rested. He thought he could have used a couple of extra hours of sleep, himself, but knew he wouldn’t have been able to wind down and, all in all, thought he was better off having gone to Whelan’s.

  Moffat moved to the front of the left row of tables. De la Peña walked to the first table of the other row and set down his coffee cup.

  Moffat began. “All right officers, what have we accomplished since yesterday morning?”

  “You mean besides saving the North County student population from a crazed gunman.” This came from the back table, either Lang or Schoenberg.

  Someone else said “Yeah.”

  De la Peña frowned. Moffat responded without emotion. “I don’t think the boy intended to hurt anyone but himself. Let’s focus all our attention on our objective. What have we done on our 25 open cases?”

  Medical Examiner Lisa McDonald entered the room. Moffat, surprised, paused to give her an opportunity to interrupt the briefing. She held up her hand. “Please continue Captain Moffat. I’ll give my report after you’ve finished.” She sat at a chair at the side of the room near De la Peña.

  “O.K. Sergeant, would you give us a summary of yesterday’s activities?”

  De la Peña placed his half-eaten sandwich, in its wrapper, next to the cup and wiped his hands with a napkin.

  “Yes, Captain. Well, first we took the Ledger Dispatch letter and it’s envelope to the County Forensic Lab. Jane - Officer Duncan - drove it over yesterday morning. Next, we divided the cases among the team and have been sifting through them to gather the data you asked for. Tashara and Fat and Mrs. G. put up the map and marked all the victim’s home addresses and in those few cases where there was a crime scene, they marked that as well.” De la Peña pointed at the map on the wall with its color-coded pushpins.

  “Good. What else?”

  “We’ve begun filling in the database - an Excel worksheet, really. It’s on the shared drive, so we’re all able to update it as we go along.”

  Moffat nodded again.

  “Also, Captain, we gave priority to searching the files for references to physical evidence that was collected during the original investigations. We think we have a complete list. In the afternoon, Officers Duncan and Fat went to the Evidence Room Storage to pick up everything. Schoenberg and Lang went out in the field. They re-interviewed Ms. Davies and followed up some possible leads.”

  “Good summary. Thanks. Now, Lisa did you have something for us?”

  “I was at the front desk with the Office Admin when Officer Duncan brought the sample. She explained what it was for so we placed it ahead of the less urgent work.” With wide eyes and a slight smile Dr. McDonald relayed the story of the sample.

  “It didn’t take the usual 72 hours or even 36. We have a result. We knew very quickly that there was enough saliva on both the envelope and the stamp to get a good test. We found DNA but it was not what our technician is used to. There are a lot of similarities but this isn’t human DNA. So, we thought, what else could it be?”

  “Our first guess was canine DNA. What other species would find itself in close enough contact to leave its DNA on a stamp and an envelope?” McDonald continued. “Then I remembered someone I had met a couple of months ago. He has a start-up, internet-based business. They rent a small office with laboratory facilities. They test dogs’ DNA. Suppose you want to know if you really have a pure bred or what breeds went into your beloved mongrel, Dr. Jake Amladi’s DoggieAncestory.com can help you. They’ll send you a kit, you swab the dog’s tongue, send it back to them and, six to eight weeks later you have your results.”

  Officer Brandon Fat mumbled “Oh.” Without acknowledging the looks directed at him, he turned to his monitor, moved the mouse then typed keystrokes for three or four words.

  “So these guys…”

  McDonald interrupted De la Peña. “Right. I showed them our test results. They identified it as canine DNA.”

  Schoenberg shook his head. “This clown back in 2003 had his dog lick the envelope?”

  “Yes. And the stamp.”

  “No way,” Lang said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “What good does it do us? There must be 5,000 dogs in this county,” Schoenberg complained.

  “Ten thousand, assuming our ratio of dogs to people matches the California average.” Officer Fat held up his notebook with several lines of equations on the page.

  Moffat looked at Dr. McDonald. She was clearly enjoying herself. “ I think Dr. McDonald may have something more.”

  “That’s right Captain. They tested our samples with their equipment. They worked all night.”

  “Whoa, that’ll put a dent in the budget. What did they charge for all night work?” Tashara asked.

  “Nothing. The whole thing was free.” McDonald tilted her head. “There was a bit of a string attached. The founder is a bit of a ‘junior g-man.’ If it helps solve a crime, he wants lunch with a famous detective.

  De la Peña spoke first. “Well, I guess I could take him to lunch.”

  The officers and doctor laughed
.

  “What does their report tell us?” Moffat asked. McDonald handed him three printed pages on the company letterhead.

  “Pure-bred,” Moffat read.

  “That helps,” Fat said, and began again at his computer.

  “One hundred percent, pure-bred miniature schnauzer.” Moffat continued.

  He and the others looked again at Fat and waited for nearly a minute, watching him read from the screen, jot numbers on his pad then operate a hand-held calculator.

  Brandon Fat was twenty-six, a native of Segovia County, half Chinese and half a mixture of English and Scottish. Slim and over six feet with brown hair and mostly Asian features, he was striking in appearance.

  “Assuming the popularity of schnauzers here matches the national average, there would be about 200 dogs of this breed. And assuming only three in five dogs in the county has a license, Animal Control would have about a hundred and twenty in their records, with owners’ names and addresses.”

  “You’re not going to have us checking every one of these damn fleabags. What? Should we get a paw print? Start another database?” Schoenberg looked to Lang for support.

  “Yeah, sounds like a waste of time.”

  De la Peña was annoyed but said nothing.

  Moffat spoke. “We’ll see. Good detective work, Dr. McDonald. Please stay with us for a while. Sergeant, where do we stand on the other physical evidence?”

  “Well, there wasn’t much from all these cases. We found nothing but the syringe at the Davies scene. Thanks to Dr. McDonald we know it contained azaperone, a veterinary tranquilizer. The Price file had no mention of physical evidence being collected. Of the other 23…Duncan, Fat, how did it go at the Evidence Storage?”

  Duncan answered. “The files showed there were only four evidence bags for the whole lot. It took some hunting but we managed to find them. It was after hours by then so we brought them here.” She pointed to several large plastic bags on the back table containing items of clothing and underwear. “There’s a small bag there also. It has a blood sample collected at the home of the 1998 missing person. There were a few drops of blood in her kitchen that couldn’t be matched to the victim.”

  McDonald clapped her hands together. “Good. I know what my department will be working on today…and tonight. I’ll tell the guys to expect you this morning. Call my cell if you need me at any hour.” The doctor walked to the back of the room. She stopped then leaning forward with her arms behind her back, she took several seconds to look over the evidence bags before leaving the room.

  “O.K., team,” Moffat started again. “I know you’re still gathering information from the case files. Let’s plan to get together at 10 o’clock to talk about what these cases have in common.”

  “Right, Captain,” De la Peña responded. “Before we break, Schoenberg, Lang what did you learn yesterday from your interviews?”

  The two had visited Nicole Davies where she worked at the gas company office. She searched her memory for every man with whom she came in contact since her move to Segovia. She didn’t remember the time and date for the phone and cable TV installation but promised to check her records when she got home. She had been to a bar on Highway 49 one time and had spoken to three men but didn’t know their names and didn’t think they matched her attacker’s height and build. The officers introduced themselves to the personnel manager at Davies’ office and talked her into giving them an employee list with birth dates and addresses, all on a floppy disk. They intended to examine the male staff of the gas company for anyone with a police record.

  Davies told Lang and Schoenberg that she frequently ate or picked up food to go at the Denny’s in town. They stopped there and questioned some members of staff. A waitress told them that one of the fry cooks had commented two, maybe three times about Davies appearance including specifically that he thought she was very sexy. She believed he had spent jail time for lewd conduct but couldn’t remember where she had heard this. The officers watched him for a few minutes and both decided they didn’t like him. He would also be checked for a police record.

  ~ ~ ~

  CHAPTER 23

  Moffat had been assigned a private office outside of the task force conference room but he preferred to share a desk with Mrs. Grubb at the head of the room. The whole arrangement, except for the addition of phones, looked remarkably like a night school computer classroom. After the morning briefing, he spoke briefly with Mrs. Grubb to ask her to schedule Cheryl Haugen for a second interview, this one at the station, for 7:00 tonight. He then sat at his desk and was about to begin planning for the brainstorming session when he was drawn to the sight of Sergeant De la Peña staring intently at a projection screen at the front of the room. Moffat stepped back and toward the center of the room. The screen showed a computer monitor display of the worksheet of the twenty-five cases. Data was being typed into rows of the worksheet as they watched. De la Peña had set up access to a shared workspace that enabled all the detectives to work simultaneously on the file. He had connected his own computer to the projector and was watching as the database grew.

  The sounds in the room were of eight people - Mrs. Grubb and De la Peña had joined in the task with the other six - turning pages, jotting notes and typing on the keyboards. Detectives Schoenberg and Lang soon began making phone calls, but the other officers continued on the database. Later, Moffat heard Tashara shout “Oops!”, then wave for De la Peña to come to her work area.

  Moffat completed his notes for the morning session, writing “commonalities” across the top of the first of three pages. He then turned his thoughts to this evening’s interview. Based on the realty office temp’s recollection of their phone conversation, Cheryl Haugen learned that Gillis was at the church in time to have driven there from her home before the murder. Haugen was anxious to confront Gillis about her transaction with Haugen’s daughter and son-in-law. Haugen claimed she had not left the house, but she had also told Moffat and De la Peña that she made no phone calls, a claim they now knew was false. Moffat pictured the street in front of the crime scene. There were only four houses on the street on fairly large lots with quite a few trees and large shrubs. Someone might have seen Haugen drive into the area and maybe park and walk, but the only home that would have an unobstructed view of the shooter and the victim was Major Franke’s. With Mrs. Pane off for her lottery ticket, the only conscious person in that house was Haugen’s own mother, Catherine Martius, who claims not even to have heard the shot. Moffat was dissatisfied with the coincidence. He jotted down several more notes then returned his attention to Davies/Price.

  “Excuse me everyone. Let’s take a short break and then begin a group discussion in about ten minutes.”

  * * *

  Four of the team members returned to the conference room, each with a large covered paper cup of coffee, Tashara among the four, holding a large pink cardboard box. Instead of taking their seats, they gathered near Moffat at the side of the room. A long cork bulletin board had been covered by white paper. Moffat had tacked photographs of each subject of the investigation, in six rows of four and a single photo, of Nicole Davies, by itself below. Next to the board, of the same dimension, was a dry-erase white board with colored markers on the tray at its bottom edge. Moffat had printed ‘commonalities’ at the top of the white board. The balance of the team arrived one by one and joined the group at the board. De la Peña walked first to his desk and moved the mouse to disengage the screen saver and display the shared file once again projected on the large screen. Most of the seven, including De la Peña, accepted a donut from the pink box at Tashara’s work station. Mrs. Grubb walked over to join them.

  “I was hoping we could conduct this exercise yesterday, but…other events took control of the day,” Moffat began. “As you might have guessed, I want to spend some time now talking about these cases and starting to think what they may have in common. First, remember, these crimes and missing persons cases are not all linked. We are hoping to identify a su
bset that are.”

  Moffat drew a vertical line on the white paper with a black marker and moved the photos of Nicole Davies and Amy Price a foot to the left of the line.

  “It requires, maybe, an over-reliance on intuition, but I’m putting these two in that subset to start. Mainly, this is because they were the subjects of communication with the local newspaper, communication that set off an alarm bell. These two also have in common the victims’ general appearance and the fact that they were new to the county and lived alone. This is what I mean by ‘commonalities.’” Moffat looked at the remaining photographs then at the projection screen. “Where do we go from here?” he asked the group.

  Officer Fat spoke first. “If we just grouped the attractive blondes, we’d have more than half. That’s kind of a high percentage, isn’t it?”

  “Pretty blondes get into more trouble,” Lang said with authority.

  “There are some older women but most are fairly young,” Duncan pointed out.

  “Slightly more than half lived alone,” De la Peña said. Looking at missing information in the “previous address” column, he added, “All the data is not filled in, but several more of the missing persons were new to the area like Price and Davies.”

  “It’s interesting,” Mrs. Grubb added, “Only five cases have a suspect’s description, of course, since most of the cases involve missing persons. Two of the rape cases may have been done by the same man. At least the victims said he was short. Nicole’s attacker and the men described in the indecent exposure, the stalker and the third rape case were said to be over six feet.”

  “Good,” De la Peña said. “The stalker and the exhibitionist were also dark-haired. The tall rapist and Nicole’s attacker…the victims’ couldn’t tell.”

  “Was there any reference to dog hair in any of these files?” Moffat asked.

  “Yes…well, maybe.” Tashara looked at Moffat “How did you know?”

  “Just a guess.”