by Peter Prasad
The three men closed the barn door and walked to Marco’s cottage for a dinner of stuffed mushrooms, Italian tomato sauce with eggplant over polenta sprinkled with farmstead grated cheese. Back at their cottage, Jake related his news of the day.
Wally also had news. He’d received an email from his lab friend in Sacramento. He agreed with Wally’s findings. The wine appeared to be adulterated with berry juice and the alcohol level had been pushed up. The wine board had assigned an investigator to the case, and the Lieutenant Governor’s office had taken an interest.
Now that an investigation was underway, Wally’s friend couldn’t supply any more details. The email ended with a generic paragraph about citizen service and a link to the state’s whistleblower statutes.
“With the Lieutenant Governor’s office involved, this case could become a political football,” Jake speculated. “It could disappear into never-never land.”
“You’re getting your blood up, bro. I’m beginning to pity that whack-job with the gun.” Wally said.
“Something stinks and I’ve got my nose in it now. So, drive me over there Sunday night?”
“No problem, Jay-bro.” Wally grinned.
The next day Jake called Hap to brief him on the plan.
Hap was happy to see any tape Jake could produce. Taking a video feed was easy: his office was wired for any contingency. That was good investigative procedure. Always have a back-up system in place, as automated as possible, especially for incriminating data, he said. Jake set up the connection to Hap’s video storage system via the Internet.
***
Sunday night arrived with no moon in the sky, lit by a bright canopy of stars. Jake waited until midnight, pacing back and forth on the veranda and running through a checklist in his head. This foray felt worse than combat. He had no idea what to expect at the winery. What kind of proof would seal the deal? He felt alone, with too many unknowns.
Jake slid from the bench seat of the red rust bucket as Wally slowed to drop him near the Fransec access road. They’d agreed that Wally would stay with the truck and find an out-of-the way place to park. In two hours, Wally would drive past the winery, and again every 30 minutes thereafter, until Jake was ready for a pick-up.
Jake scanned the dark sky. It was a good night for surveillance work. He had dressed in a black t-shirt, black windbreaker and jeans, with his worn running shoes on his feet. Inside his pack, he carried night-vision goggles that would show a heat signature for any humans or animals in the woods or on the property. He had used them before in Afghanistan.
He didn’t expect to find security guards patrolling the compound. However, a guard dog would ruin his plans. In Afghanistan, he’d always spent time pouring over the latest satellite intel. Now a civilian, he’d studied the winery on Google Maps, but he guessed the information was five years old. He had used the few pictures he’d taken with his cell phone to brief Wally. He felt his heart quicken as he committed to be a shadow in the night.
He trotted down the gravel access road, slipped behind the gate and climbed the hill. Periodically, he’d stop to scan the area through his night-vision goggles. He saw a raccoon, which loped away in the other direction.
Jake worked through the woods and hid by the burn pit to study the buildings more carefully. He saw no telltale blinking red lights; Semper didn’t appear to have an alarm system. The night goggles revealed no heat signatures of a human or guard dog presence.
The parking lot was empty. Jake moved forward, circled each building at a crouch and checked for alarm systems and remote cameras. The winery seemed deserted.
Jake tested the doors and windows until he found unlocked access. He climbed through a window and examined the interior of the storage barn. It looked like a typical wine production facility, somewhat outdated, with cement floors, storage vats, pumps, hoses, and rows of wine barrels for aging. He tested for heat signatures and remote camera transmissions. Nada.
He pulled a penlight from his pocket and used his camera phone to photograph the invoices and shipping records he found on a clipboard in the wine barn. The paperwork documented a trail of 20-case deliveries into San Francisco, pallets shipped by a trucking company, and containers going to Europe. Combined, the invoiced amounts exceeded $3 million. If he could prove wine adulteration, then he could prove grand larceny. However, on its own, none of the paperwork would convince a judge.
Jake methodically worked his way around each storage room, looking for grain alcohol, fructose and flavoring agents. A large, motorized mixing bin looked suspicious, but it was clean and empty.
Jake slipped back outside through the window. He eyed the new office building, moved toward it, tested the windows, and scanned the eves for security cameras. He found no easy access.
He returned to the front door of the office and examined the door lock with his pen light. He reached into his pocket for amateur lock-pick tools. He was sweating and out of practice. He fumbled through several failed attempts to gain access. He steadied himself and calmed his breathing. By holding the pen light with his teeth, and using both hands, he managed to engage the lock and twist to the right.
He was rewarded with the sound of an almost silent click and the locked door pulled open. He was in. He wiped his brow, expecting to hear the shriek of an alarm system. He heard nothing louder than the sound of a few crickets in the chill night air. He made a mental note to install several modern locking door handles on a board back at the cottage. He needed to practice with the lock picks.
Jake entered the office quickly and locked the door behind him. He scanned the room with his pen light. Bathrooms, a conference table, two desks and a lab set-up on an open counter with a kitchen sink set-up on the far wall. He needed an hour to examine it all.
He checked all the access doors first. Both bathrooms were empty, as was a small bedroom. Another room held dozens of cases of wine. He stood in the middle of the office space, trying to get a feel for what secrets it might reveal. His eyes focused on the larger desk, surrounded by wine bottles. He noticed a laptop sitting on the desktop.
He moved to the desk and sat in Semper’s chair. He tested all the drawers, finding the top drawer locked. He fumbled with the lock-pick tools until it opened. His pen light revealed several prescription bottles of medications, sedatives, and a vial of blue Viagra pills.
He unscrewed the caps from several unlabeled bottles of liquid. He didn’t know enough about pharmaceuticals to identify any of this stuff.
He decided not to taste the contents. He opened a metal tin of breath mints and spilled a suspicious white powder on his leg. He wet a fingertip and tasted it on the tip of his tongue. So Semper had a Class-A interest in narcotics. That might sway a judge or the sheriff.
Jake dusted his pants leg and replaced everything as he had found it. He spent five more minutes fumbling with the lock-pick set until he had the drawer secured.
He turned to Semper’s laptop, opened the lid and fired it up. The silly bastard was using no password-protected security system. Was that arrogance or ignorance? He would decide after he had more evidence.
He scrolled through a directory of installed software, and made note of several remote video feeds. He scanned the most recent files by date. He reviewed Semper’s spreadsheets. Sales were approaching four million dollars. He looked around for a printer and wondered if he dared try to print a hard copy. He saw no printer. That felt too dangerous anyway.
Then his eyes spotted the extra hard drive attached to the computer. He searched for the new drive in the directory. He clicked on the most recent video file and watched as Semper perverted on a woman who appeared to be drugged. He noticed video files going back a few weeks. Next time, he’d remember to bring an extra hard disk back-up so he could copy these kinds of files. He added it to his mental list.
He scanned the directory of wireless video feeds on Semper’s laptop. Each was labeled: Bathroom, Bedroom, Office. Jake could not figure it out. The man had a security camera set-up bu
t he ran it all through his laptop and recorded the video on a separate hard-drive. It bothered him, but he would think about it later.
He checked his cell phone, which he’d set to vibrate. He’d burned 60 minutes already. He sent Wally an A-OK text, and returned the phone to his pocket. He stood and scanned the room, measuring his next few moves.
He attached a remote audio microphone to the underside of the conference table. He climbed up on a chair to access an air conditioning duct that provided a good view of the entire room. He removed the grille that covered the duct and hid a motion-activated camera and transmitter inside the vent.
He looked around the room. He had zilch, photos of some shipping records and the tip of his tongue was numb. He couldn’t think of much more to do. He picked up his backpack and exited the building, testing the door handle to assure himself it was locked tight.
He stood in the doorway and scanned the surrounding area through his night-vision goggles. He studied the rooftops, again. He trotted back to the wine storage barn and climbed back in through the window. He climbed up a ladder and reached into the exposed wooden rafters to find a safe place to secure the signal booster transmitter and battery pack.
The transmitter and battery pack, hidden behind a beam of the ceiling, would reveal his visit, if they were to be discovered. Jake decided it was worth the risk. He wanted eyes and ears on Semper.
With the booster transmitter, he expected to capture the feedback at his cottage. Hulk at the computer supply store had assured him the signal would be strong enough to monitor and record back at the dairy. Jake realized how much faith he had put into Hulk and the expensive equipment. Frankly, he wouldn’t trust the set-up until he saw it for himself from the comfort of his laptop back at the dairy.
Jake climbed down from the ladder and replaced it where he had found it. He checked the floor for any scratches in the dust and wiped out any telltale evidence of his night climb. He exited through the open window, shut it tightly, and scampered into the woods.
He stopped and squatted behind a thatch of scrub oak trees, lowered the night vision goggles to the bridge of his nose and scanned the area one last time. Nothing moved. He saw no green glows of life. His heart slowed. He tasted the damp air of the Sonoma night, and sat still for a moment until his own breathing had slowed.
He opened his backpack and removed his laptop, wrapped in a towel for padding.
He hardly felt like a private investigator, more like a college kid trying to pull off a sorority prank. The laptop lit up and he tested the wireless video feeds. Despite the low light conditions, he had images. His system was installed and operational.
So Semper was a coke-fueled pervert. By Sonoma standards, that was twisted. Jake thought on it. Semper’s pinhead camera set-up was so that he could monitor the Ladies room and bedroom from his own laptop. He did not know what crime that violated, but he imagined a judge would know.
‘Your honor, may we dim the lights?’ He knew that trashing a man’s reputation in a community as small as Sonoma could bring the case to a satisfactory close. It would bring up the father’s perversions as well. He had no idea how this case would play out. Meanwhile, he’d keep watching until he knew more.
The wireless transmission signal looked strong, boosted by the battery-pack behind the ceiling beam in the barrel barn. Hulk had said the system had a two-week battery life. He’d shown Jake how to optimize it. He closed the laptop lid and wrapped it in the towel, zipped the backpack closed and slung it across his back.
He sensed he was missing something. He sat and reviewed all he had done. What more could bring this case further along? He had no explanation for the dead goats. He had no hard evidence of adulterated wine.
He felt like an idiot, a rank amateur, going back in, but that’s what he decided to do. He trotted down from the hill toward the office door, feeling for the lock-pick in his pocket. He opened the door quickly and used his pen light to make another examination of the various Fransec wines in the storeroom. Again, he found no hard evidence of wine tampering, no jugs of grain alcohol, agents or juice.
One wall of the storage closet was stacked with 50 cases of bottled wine. He noticed an open case, three bottles missing, labeled Shawn Estates Red Wine. Might this be the ‘before’ bottle in a ‘before-and-after’ wine adulteration scheme?
Wally might be able to test for that. Perhaps it would interest the lab guys in Sacramento. Maybe Semper was doing a label swap on existing product. Jake imagined several things. He lifted a bottle and tucked it in his backpack nestled next to the laptop.
On the other side of the storeroom, he found another 50 cases of Fransec. He pulled a bottle and compared labels. This label bore a production date, which he expected from a high-end wine, but it was dated 2003, a ten-year old wine. This was proof that Semper was switching labels, maybe. He wrapped the second bottle in the towel and placed it safely in his backpack.
His investigation had run a full two hours. He checked the floor for boot prints or dirt. It was clean; he had left no tracks. He exited the lab building, making sure the door locked with a click before he released the handle.
Time to flee. Jake headed toward the woods, jogging past the now-cooled burn pit. He peered in briefly for melted bottles of grain alcohol, but nothing appeared obvious. He hurried on. He trotted to the crest of the hill, down the back slope, and along the gravel-paved road. He slid around the locked gate and ran to the road. He was sweating, despite the cool night air.
He hid by the road and sent a text message to Wally. Within ten minutes, he saw the red rust bucket rolling toward him. Jake whistled. Wally stopped. He climbed in, placed the backpack gingerly between his feet, and began to describe the details of his surveillance mission to Wally.
Back at the dairy, Jake opened his backpack, lifted out the two bottles of wine and turned on his laptop. Wally watched, expectantly, over his shoulder. He checked the video feed. The system was operational. Wally patted him on his back, and without saying a word, headed to his room for a nap.
Jake set the laptop for a seven o’clock wake-up call. He kicked off his shoes and peeled off his black windbreaker. He went to the refrigerator to get a cold beer. He propped his feet on the table, sipped his beer and took inventory of his predicament. He had staked a claim as a private investigator, albeit illegally, and pulled off his first night surveillance in the civilian world. He was trusting a computer monitoring system he barely understood. All in all it was a good night. Jake fell asleep in the chair.
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CHAPTER TWENTY- TWO
Jake awoke with his laptop chirping. The transmission was on an automatic timer that had kicked in. He checked the audio and video feeds. The signal strength was strong. The image of Semper’s empty office grew stronger as the sun brightened. He tested the microphone signal. He would not know its recording capabilities until he had a live conversation to monitor. He set the microphone to voice activation and let the system go back to sleep.
Jake paced the room, thinking through his next five moves in 360 directions. He ground fresh Kenya coffee beans and put the kettle on to boil. He reached for a frying pan and dropped a raw egg on the floor.
He was tired, but too excited to rest or think clearly. Something burned in his gut, and he couldn’t put his finger on it. He hadn’t felt this amped-up since Afghanistan, wrung out on nervous energy, knowing something would happen soon.
Wally stumbled through his bedroom doorway 15 minutes after the bacon hit the skillet. Neither brother talked; they had a ritual of giving Wally another 15 minutes to wake up. Both kept eyeing the laptop, willing the screen to start the show.
The screen slept until nine o’clock, then crackled awake with chirps and a blinking monitor. The image from the pinhead camera in the AC duct filled the screen. Conference table, two desks, lab counter top, back wall kitchen—the same room Jake had explored the night before. He saw movement. A man entered the screen. Jake toggled the audio and turned t
he volume up.
Jake and Wally watched two men enter the room, the black-haired van driver and a white-coated lab tech. The lab tech sat at the table, quiet as a clump of grapes. The van driver paced the room, muttering. His body jerked oddly to accent what he said to himself. He paced like a panther and acted in control. The microphone picked up his conversation when he spoke to the lab tech.
“Doc says he’ll be here in an hour. Big…” The driver made sweeping gestures in the air. “Big progress review. Got me on stand-by. Ready, Stanley?”
The delivery driver had addressed the lab tech. Jake wrote his name down on a pad—Stanley.
“Right, Bill, all prepared,” Stanley replied.
Jake drew several square boxes on the page. He wrote Bill in the box next to Stanley, and drew a connecting line. On the line he wrote the time: 9:14 a.m.
Clearly Bill, the van driver, ran the show. Stanley, the lab tech, was deferential to him. Perhaps there was an edge of fear in Stanley’s voice.
“Say, Stanley, we testing more today? Maybe time to fire up the pit?” Bill reached out and patted Stanley’s hand. “You like goat meat? I do.”
“No sir, I’m a chicken and fish man, myself. Fry it to kill all the germs.”
Unconsciously, Stanley began rubbing his hands together. His nervousness showed as his fingers tap-danced over the table top in front of him.
“Doc says you’re smart. He calls you a bright blade. He hates those dogs. Always tearing stuff up.” Bill dipped his head deferentially, scratched himself and looked around the office. “I think we gotta eat what we kill. Them goats is good.”
“Jesus, you’re not eating that meat, are you? I hate to think… it’s toxic. If you eat the brain, I know it will kill you, even if you cook it,” Stanley looked at him, bug-eyed.
Bill grinned back and didn’t say a word. Stanley shook his head, stood and walked to the in-set sink in the bar top, pacing back and forth. Bill stared out the window. He turned back to Stanley, who paced with his head down.
