The Blue Garou (Detective 'Cadillac' Holland Series Book 1)

by H Hiller

  “Looks like I may need to pay another visit to the kennel, huh?”

  I was inwardly relieved that, for the first time in a while, there was a clue that did not lead immediately back to Amanda.

  “Like I said, this all either just got a lot easier or a whole lot harder for you.”

  The case had definitely taken a turn. There was no longer any question that someone had used the dog to murder Biggie Charles Lynley. His death was absolutely a homicide, which would not please Avery. He would have to press for an arrest, but at least it probably wasn’t going to be Amanda Rhodes. Cisco was the only person on my list who was certain to be indicted at this point, but I was still convinced that he had not killed Biggie on his own.

  TWENTY

  I read the latest edition of Gambit, the city’s weekly arts and politics gazette, while I waited for Chief Avery to join me for lunch at the bistro. The paper had an article about Biggie and his supposed efforts to get young men involved with music instead of drugs. They offered no theory on how he had financed the operation, but at least there was absolutely no mention of John or Amanda Rhodes, or even of his having a son. Bumper and Tyshika each had only passing mention, and only the bodyguard was interviewed. The local television and radio stations had barely mentioned Biggie’s second line and funeral. I felt that I was now working comfortably below the radar. Offbeat, the monthly music magazine, had yet to run an obituary, but I hoped that would be the end of the media’s interest in the case.

  Avery came through the door with a lanky plainclothes detective wearing the badge of an ATF Agent. Avery managed to fit his large frame on a varnished wood stool and had just introduced Ned Davis when we were approached by one of the new daytime waitresses. I told her to just let Tony know that there would be three of us eating lunch. Tony always tried his new dishes out on Avery, less because of any culinary insight than his willingness to eat anything put in front of him. Today it was going to be a passion fruit salsa on grilled fish of some sort.

  Avery had Agent Ned Jackson describe the dead ends the ATF had encountered when they followed up on Tyshika’s tip about Biggie’s storage locker full of guns. The locker was not only not full of guns but had been rented by someone else three months earlier. The company ownership had also changed hands, but the new owners had retained the previous owners’ records. There was no indication that the locker ever benefited Biggie.

  The ATF had found that the person who was renting the locker at the time Tyshika indicated Biggie was allegedly using it as a weapons cache was going to be hard to find. The young woman who had rented the locker had obviously been wearing a bad wig or died their hair in a sloppy fashion when she had her picture taken for what proved to be a fake ID of very good quality. The license plate on the Yukon Denali she drove turned out to belong to a family sedan which had been sold for scrap days earlier. Agent Jackson asked me to keep my eyes and ears open for anything that might validate Tyshika’s tip, and especially anything that would explain what became of what the ATF feared was hundreds of firearms.

  I brought Chief Avery up to speed on the revitalized investigation. I explained the dog had been switched. This could only have happened when it was loaded at the kennel. The carrier had been covered in gift wrap to conceal the fact, and that the latch was locked in the open position and held in place only by the paper. The person, or persons, who had wrapped the carrier and loaded it absolutely knew what was going to happen. I told Avery that Cisco had already admitted to dyeing the dog and wrapping the kennel. I could arrest him on the strength of that but I was certain he had done all of this on someone else’s orders. The people involved with the dog that day and were still alive were Bumper, Tyshika, Jerry, and Cisco.

  I told Avery about the possible link between the kennel and an illegal dog fight in Slidell. Avery said I could get a search warrant for Alpha Dog Kennels based on what I was presenting, but neither of us really expected to turn anything up by pulling the place apart.

  Tyshika may have wanted Biggie dead if she figured his will would provide for her. I accepted that she probably didn’t know there was a will, and Avery wondered why she might have assumed she was the main beneficiary even if she knew there was a will.

  Bumper’s reputation was not going to benefit from losing a high profile client. We kicked around the idea that Bumper may have had a gripe with Biggie, or thought killing him would better his position with either Tyshika or the studio operation. He also claimed to have advance knowledge of the details of the will.

  I mentioned Amanda and the adoption in passing, and the blackmail not at all. Even if there was blackmail involved, I had a hard time imagining Amanda would hire someone like Cisco to kill Biggie to eliminate whatever threat he posed to Parker’s adoption. She certainly had the financial resources to hire someone more experienced to have done so, just as she had more than enough money to pay a blackmailer indefinitely. I needed to believe that she was more likely to continue paying for silence than to permanently silence Biggie.

  Avery suggested I do some research on Bumper Jackson’s background while the three of us enjoyed a bruschetta appetizer. I remembered Bumper said he had played football at the University of Oklahoma, and had suffered a career-ending knee injury. It struck us both as more than a little odd that someone with any amount of education would have wound up as the muscle for someone as uneducated and crude as Biggie Charles Lynley.

  I moved to the bar once Avery set to work on the plate of fish Tony delivered to the table and dialed 411 to get the phone number to the university’s main switchboard in Norman. I patiently worked my way up the phone tree from the receptionist to the Director of Alumni Relations.

  “This is Hank Farrell.” The Director had the drawl of a long-time citizen of the plains.

  “Good morning, Mister Farrell. My name is Detective Holland and I am the lead investigator on a homicide case in New Orleans. I was hoping you might give me some information on one of your graduates.”

  “Oh, my. I will certainly do my best.”

  “I need to know what you can tell me about Bumper Jackson. I understand he played football for your university a few years back.”

  “He sure did. Is he alright? I actually played on the football team with him.”

  “Oh, he’s just great.” I felt like I had struck oil. I might get a lot more from Farrell than could be found on Bumper’s transcript. What I needed to know about Jackson had nothing to do with his GPA. “He busted up a knee, right?”

  “Yes. You could hear it in the stands.” I could almost see Farrell wince as he recalled the injury. “He had the knee replaced but the injury ended his football career. He gave up his scholarship for his last year here.”

  “So how did he finish his degree? Did his family have money?” I was just making conversation now. The Bumper Jackson I was dealing with said he had not had surgery.

  “No, he was able to get an ROTC scholarship after his knee healed enough to pass their physical.”

  “The ROTC?” The guy I met did not look like he had spent any time in the ROTC. The military teaches you a way to carry yourself and stand that stays with you a long time after you have any use for the training. I am still unable to slouch.

  “Sure thing,” Farrell said with obvious pride in his former teammate. “He joined the Army and has been sending us great letters from Afghanistan since he returned for his third tour of duty.”

  “Bumper Jackson is serving in the Army, and he is overseas?”

  “Yes, sir. He's an Apache helicopter pilot in Afghanistan.”

  “I guess I am thinking of the wrong guy. The guy I am talking about is about six foot ten, weighs maybe two sixty or eighty, with a shaved head. He may have had hair when you knew him.”

  “That sure isn't Bumper Jackson.” Farrell sounded very certain of his recollections.

  I had no immediate follow up question and the conversation lagged. I was left to wonder who would know enough about Jackson to try to impersonate him, especially
anyone who might know he wouldn’t be showing up here unexpectedly. “But, you know what? That does sort of sound like his younger brother.”

  “Brother?”

  “Yeah, Eric Jackson. He was here on an academic scholarship. Eric earned an accounting degree and went to work for our Highway Patrol. He ran into some trouble and I heard he had transferred to your police department a few years ago. That’s if I remember right.”

  “He joined NOPD?”

  “I don't remember the circumstances, but I’m sure that’s right. I think it was about 2003 or 2004.”

  I knew I could find him easily enough now that I had this much to work with. It also confirmed my suspicions about Bumper after our last meeting.

  “I can look into that from my end.” I thanked Farrell for his time and help and was still grinning when I returned to my seat across from Chief Avery.

  “Solved the case have you?”

  “Actually I just may have kicked over a hornet's nest.”

  “Nothing new there.” Avery grinned and took another bite of fish.

  “The bodyguard was apparently an NOPD officer just before Hurricane Katrina. Does the name Eric Jackson ring a bell?”

  “Not off hand, but it’s easy enough to check out.” I could tell he wouldn’t be very happy to find out Eric Jackson was a rogue cop. “What else did you find out?”

  “The alumni office says that the real Bumper Jackson is an Army chopper pilot in Afghanistan, but Eric Jackson was an accounting major who went to work for their State Patrol and then joined NOPD.”

  “Hopefully he is someone else’s problem these days. I guess I'll have to make some calls though, huh?” Avery sighed, but the sigh was for my benefit. Avery’s week would be made by being able to blow the cover off an undercover operation he had not been informed about in advance, because not blowing the guy's cover would give him a very large IOU from whoever was running an undercover operation. “Do I have to tell you to stay away from the guy until I get back to you?”

  “You just did.” I was starting to miss the simplicity of looking for bail jumpers.

  TWENTY ONE

  Avery came by the bistro in time for Happy Hour on Friday with the news that a search warrant had been issued in St. Tammany Parish for the search of Alpha Dog Kennels. He said I needed to call the detectives at the St. Tammany Sheriff’s Department Monday morning after ten o’clock to arrange to serve the warrant.

  I repeated my misgivings about serving the warrant. I believed that showing up with a convoy of officers to comb through every inch of the kennel while it was open would be devastating to the business. Very few scenarios I could dream up would have required Jerome Washington to have been directly involved in using a dog to kill Biggie. Avery shrugged his shoulders, finished his beer, and told me to give him a call when I decided what I wanted to do.

  My solution to the dilemma of potentially damaging Jerry Washington’s business by turning his operation upside down without really knowing what to look for was to simply call the business owner and tell him I had the search warrant, and that I would be required to execute it during business hours. He readily agreed to escort me on a tour of the facility after closing time that very day, and to keep this between the two of us.

  I ran a risk of valuable evidence being destroyed in the meantime, but had already considered the likelihood that there was no evidence to destroy. The best piece of evidence would be the real Taz, but I didn’t think for a second that the dog was still at the kennel. That dog would be long gone if whoever made the switch had any sense at all. Beyond that, I was not really sure just what I could hope to find. Dye packets and rolls of wrapping paper would not be any evidence, as it was uncontested that the animal was dyed blue and the carrier had been gift wrapped when it was loaded into the back of Biggie's Land Rover.

  Jerry Washington was alone in the lobby when I arrived just after eight that evening. He thanked me again for giving him a chance to cooperate rather than descending on him with a search warrant and news cameras.

  “Let’s take a look at the kennels, alright?”

  Jerry agreed and led the way across the patio where we had had our meeting. A set of stone steps led to a basic cement sidewalk running down the middle of a U-shape created by three buildings. The kennels were contained in a pair of cinder block buildings with wood paneled exteriors flanking the sidewalk. They were air conditioned, and twenty foot by four foot exercise pens extending from the buildings marked each dog’s territory. The dog runs were arranged to run towards the center walkway. The dogs were locked inside the buildings with the doors to their exercise runs closed for the night. The trainers’ building was at the far end of the walkway, giving form to the squared off U-shape.

  We approached the training building and I said I wanted to look in the offices for anything that might make the trip out here worthwhile. The building was a simple cinder block structure painted green with ivy growing over the surface. The windows were not designed to be opened and the door was a heavy metal one. This seemed to be an unusually high level of security for a business and building unlikely to be burglarized. Then again, the only things people leave unprotected are things they do not value, and people tend to lock up even their backyard tool sheds.

  The building’s interior had a large open space for handling dogs flanked by a pair of individual offices separated by a lavatory. The office doors were locked, but Jerry had keys to both offices. Each office had a cheap metal desk, a low backed office chair, and a second chair just opposite of the desk. Each office had a two drawer filing cabinet, both of which were locked. Each office also had an older desktop computer and a basic ink jet printer.

  I made note of the personal differences in the offices. One was well decorated with photographs of what looked like a happy family, with dad and mom and three grade-school aged children. The office was meticulous and the bookshelf held a dozen books on animal training and veterinary medicine.

  The second office was the one I assumed was used by Tyshika's cousin. This one was a little more cluttered, and the pictures here were of Cisco and famous clients whose dogs he had trained. I was not surprised to find there was no picture of Biggie Charles in the collection. It would not have been much of a recommendation to anyone looking at the gallery. There were also metal die cast models of Maserati and Ferrari coupes being used as paperweights, perhaps betraying a desire to reach the level of income and prestige they represented. This was a man who loved what money can buy and could probably be bought just by stroking his ego.

  ”I am going to guess that this is Cisco’s office.” We had spoken barely ten words between us since I had arrived. I had a job to do and the kennel owner was obviously deeply concerned that me doing my job was going to cost him his business.

  “You’re racial profiling.” I looked up to see Jerry had finally managed to smile.

  I leafed through the puddles of papers and files on the desktop and tried to access the computer, but didn’t have the patience to try to guess his password. Jerry knew the password and booted the computer, but I had no immediate idea what I might look for that would shed light on the case I was investigating. I was beginning think I was as stupid as I suspected Cisco thought I was but I still did not think of him as the sort to have made a to-do list to kill Biggie and leave it on his computer. I was certain that it would prove to be fairly simple to have someone look at all of the files if I decided to impound it.

  I noticed brightly colored pieces of paper in the trash basket as I leaned over to look in the drawers. The pieces of paper proved to be a business card sized party invitation torn into quarters. The front cover was a four color design built around the Greek letter Omega over the dark red silhouette of a Rottweiler. The back of the card had an invitation printed on it. The card was designed for the time and GPS coordinates of the event to be hand-written into the open spaces before mailing it. I remembered the tattoo on the Rottweilers taken into custody at the raided dog fight. I felt a joyful shiver run
down my spine when it occurred to me what I had found. Cisco must have thought anyone who came across it would not make a connection to the dog fights, and had I not already discovered the tattooed dog I might not have either.

  The name of the intended recipient may have been misspelled, or the guest had been removed from the guest list after the card was made up. This name was heavily inked over before the card was tossed aside. The location, date, and time seemed alright with each simply doodled over. I knew the gals in the crime lab would have no trouble retrieving the name if need be.

  “Recognize this?”

  I reached across the desk to hand the owner the scraps of paper. Jerry had taken a seat in the guest chair and silently watched me go about my search. I have done this in the past and felt like I was playing a game of ‘Hotter/Colder’ as I moved about the room.

  “No. What do you think it is?”

  “Well it looks like an invitation to a dog fight.”

  “That son-of-a-bitch.”

  This reaction was not a performance for my benefit. Jerry seemed genuinely upset and I could see veins bulging in his neck. He really needed something to break but there was nothing he could destroy without betraying our visit.

  “This is a good thing.”

  “For you. Not so much for me.” He sat down but continued to grow more aggravated at the betrayal and position in which he felt he had been placed.