Murder in Mongolia

by Fritz Galt

  He opened another drawer for countries beginning with the letter “C.”

  There were plenty of folders, from Cambodia to the Czech Republic, but a huge gap where China papers would have been. The gap was so large that it could have held as many pages as the rest of the eighteen countries beginning with “C” combined. What did that say about China’s environmental record?

  But it was that the China file was missing that interested Jake most. What about China was necessary to steal, or hide?

  Had Mongolian and Chinese agents broken repeatedly into this seemingly insignificant house in Utah, just to steal the two files?

  If so, the information must be sensitive, or highly explosive.

  Now that he was on a geographic treasure hunt, how about Russia?

  He slid open the “R” drawer. The tabs for Romania and Rwanda were slim, but the Russia file overflowed with damning reports on the environment. It seemed like no subject was overlooked, from habitat loss to nuclear waste. And, importantly as far as Jake’s mission was concerned, nothing appeared to have been taken from the file.

  He stood back and shook his head.

  “The Mongolia and China files are missing,” he said. “But nobody has taken the Russia file.”

  Bonnie had been looking over his shoulder, her face white.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “When you add it all up,” she said, “this world is in one heap of trouble.”

  Jake thought he had a reasonable grasp of environmental issues. But looking at the life’s work of a dedicated environmental activist, maybe it was time for more than simple awareness.

  Then his phone rang.

  Distracted, he looked at the caller ID. It was from somewhere in Virginia.

  “Yes?” he answered.

  “We have examined the body, such as it is,” came the small, clinical voice. It was Supriya Rao, the young technician at the FBI Laboratory.

  Jake walked away from Bonnie Lakewood for more privacy and entered the dining room/dissection lab.

  “The victim was killed in an explosion,” Supriya said.

  So the RSO and science officer were right. Bill Frost had been blown up.

  “Was the explosion the cause of death?” he asked, just to make certain that he wasn’t missing anything.

  “Cause of death is difficult to determine,” she said. “All we received were the bones and charred flesh of a body that was completely dismembered by an explosion.”

  “All the same body?”

  “Yes. All samples of the victim’s skin color, build, and DNA match. Again, such as it is.”

  For a moment, Jake imagined the woman staring at a pattern of bloody blobs laid out on an examination table in the rough shape of a human form. Had Bill Frost ended up one more victim of mankind’s assault on the environment, now laid out to be studied as a specimen on a coroner’s table?

  “However, you should know,” Supriya continued in her small, but precise voice, “the remains are not those of Bill Frost.”

  “What?” Jake sat down on the nearest chair.

  Deep inside he felt the rumblings of something ominous and disturbing. It gave him a new sense of what he was up against. Not only was the body count racking up, but the devious nature of the crime was also beginning to emerge.

  Who in the world was behind all this?

  “You matched the DNA with Cal Frost?” he asked, for clarity.

  “We did, and there was no match.”

  “They were samples from brothers, not the same person,” he reminded her.

  “We know that, and they couldn’t have been more different.”

  “Different how?”

  “DNA can tell us a lot about people’s heritage. And these people were from two entirely different racial groups.”

  Jake could easily visualize the ethnicity, body types, and facial features of the Bill Frost he saw on National Geographic and Cal Frost in McLean. Aside from the baldness gene, they could have been identical twins.

  “May I ask, what race are we talking about?” Jake asked, wondering if he was skating on thin ethical ice.

  “The victim’s DNA includes remnants of Denisovan Man.”

  “Come again?”

  “A small percentage of his genome comes from a cousin species of Homo sapiens that is now extinct. It was first discovered in the Altai Mountains of Central Asia, but now appears in the DNA of Tibetans, as well as Melanesians and the people of Papua New Guinea.”

  “So the body could be Tibetan?”

  “Or from that region.”

  Jake’s mental atlas was weak on that area of the world. “How about Mongolia?” he asked. “Is that in the Tibetan region?”

  “If you’re asking if the victim might be Mongolian, I would say there is a reasonable chance.”

  Fascinating. So it might have been a Mongolian who had tragically died on the back of Bogd Khan Mountain.

  Bonnie appeared in the dining room and tapped her watch, bringing Jake back to the present. He acknowledged that he was aware of how late it was, and she left.

  “How about the DNA from Utah?” he asked into the phone. “Did that match the victim?”

  “That didn’t match either,” Supriya said.

  Jake looked at the liquor cabinet, at the whiskey bottles, and at the shot glasses from which Bill Frost and his various girlfriends had once sipped. So Jake wasn’t sitting in the victim’s house.

  “Interestingly,” the young woman went on, “the DNA from McLean didn’t even match the DNA from Hurricane.”

  He let that sink in. It gave him even more reason to doubt that this was the house of Cal’s brother.

  Was Bill even Cal’s brother?

  “And lastly,” he said. “What did you learn about the physical evidence from Mongolia?”

  Supriya took a moment to check her records. “We received bagged items marked ‘Best Western Premier Tuushin Hotel’ and bagged items marked ‘Bogd Khan Mountain.’”

  “Does the DNA match the body?”

  “We got swabs from his personal effects at the hotel, but nothing matches.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “There were no fingers left on the body.”

  Jake took a moment to process the image of a body with no fingers. It must have been some explosion, or the Mongolian police hadn’t gathered or packed up all the remains.

  “Were there any office papers in the hotel room? Perhaps a manila folder on Mongolia or China?”

  “Only receipts.”

  Jake made a mental note that the Mongolia and China files were still missing. Were they valuable enough to steal? To kill for?

  And where were they now? In Mongolia or the U.S.? Did the Russians want them? The Chinese?

  “What items were in the Bogd Khan Mountain bag?”

  The lab tech patiently reviewed the lab’s findings. “There was a smartphone and a pair of trekking poles.”

  “Can you identify the owners?”

  “Smartphone: a locally branded device, possibly Android operating system, but it’s too badly damaged to turn on. And trekking poles: REI brand set for a medium-sized hiker.”

  None of that was clear enough evidence to identify the victim.

  “Can the lab reactivate the phone?” he asked.

  “Our forensic engineers are looking at it now. They may not have results for several days, if ever. Some of the components are melted.”

  “I need you to continue working hard to extract the contents of that phone. It could help us identify the victim and give us phone numbers, contacts, notes, emails…”

  “I have your mobile number,” she said. “I’ll call you when the results come back.”

  Bonnie was clearing her throat, and he had to end the conversation.

  “Thanks, Supriya. Stay in touch.”

  He should have felt relieved that the person who died on Bogd Khan Mountain wasn’t Bill Frost. Now that there was no evidence of violence against an American, the case
should be officially closed.

  But blame it on instinct, call it his commitment to the FBI Director, pin it on the fact that Bill Frost was still missing, or chalk it up to dogged persistence to solve a puzzle, he was more intrigued than ever.

  Jake felt the potholes of Hurricane’s back roads in SAC Bonnie Lakewood’s official SUV. Simultaneously, he tried to absorb the impact of what he had just learned from the FBI Laboratory in Quantico.

  The McLean DNA test proved negative. The Hurricane DNA test proved negative.

  As far as he could tell, Bill Frost had not died in Mongolia. Did the FBI still have a case?

  Yet the questions lingered. If the person killed on Bogd Khan Mountain wasn’t Bill Frost, then why was Bill missing? And why had his house been broken into, not once but twice including earlier that day?

  With a complete lack of evidence pointing to either a victim or a crime, his case was going nowhere. He already dreaded returning to DC to face Whitney Baker empty-handed.

  The whole episode came down to a single key piece of evidence. And the intruder in Hurricane probably had it.

  Who was this suspect caught trying to raid Bill Frost’s house? And why was he there?

  Bonnie flicked on her turn signal though there was no traffic on the wide, lonely street. The blinkers were loud in the stillness of the car. Then they crossed into the tree-lined parking lot of the local police station.

  The Hurricane City Police Department was on a corner with the Mormon church down one road and a theater playing Hot Tub Time Machine down the other.

  Jake took off his sunglasses and studied the station. The building was at one end of a strip mall alongside a dental practice and a fitness center.

  Exactly where the jail cells were located wasn’t obvious. But the answers to all of Jake’s questions could lie within.

  “Time to meet the alleged intruder,” Bonnie Lakewood said, and climbed out of the vehicle.

  “Does he have a lawyer?” Jake asked as they crossed the empty parking lot.

  “My agents have been working on that,” she said. “He has no personal lawyer. And my guess is whoever he works for doesn’t want to show their hand.”

  “Then does he have a public defender?”

  “He does. The county prosecutor has worked out a plea deal that will allow him to talk without fear of our using his testimony against him.”

  “And is he talking?”

  “He has agreed to talk. We’re just waiting for you.”

  Jake and Bonnie stepped into the cool, expansive interior of the police station. Immediately, the other FBI agents and a bulky-looking police chief set aside the waiting room periodicals and shot to their feet.

  “Welcome to Hurrakun,” the chief said, pronouncing the city name with a Western accent.

  “Kind of quiet around here,” Jake observed, seeing no other officers among the multiple desks.

  “It’s after business hours,” the chief said. He was jowly with a walrus mustache, but otherwise acted like Johnny-on-the-spot. “We stayed open for you.”

  Jake wondered what happened to law and order once the police department shut down for the night.

  Jake got right to the point. “Where is he?”

  “Our local sex offender is sitting in our jail cell.”

  “So he’s had run-ins before?”

  “Oh, yeah. Tommy Weaver isn’t allowed anywhere near kids.”

  Jake had to put that information aside and concentrate on the break-in. “Is he ready to talk?”

  The chief nodded. “His public defender has come and gone, and the suspect is prepared to testify under oath.”

  “Where did the defender go?”

  “It’s his shift at the Subway,” the law man said, as if two-hatting was a common practice around there.

  “Take me to jail,” Jake said.

  The prisoner peered out between freshly painted white bars to see who was coming his way.

  Jake saw a man in his late twenties with wild hair and alert, curious eyes. Jake asked for a separate room where they could talk.

  The chief reached behind his belt for handcuffs.

  “No need for restraints,” Jake said. “I’m sure Tom is more than willing to cooperate.” He shot the man a confident look, and got a wan smile in return.

  “You’ll take notes?” Jake asked Bonnie.

  She nodded and pulled out a pen and notepad.

  The new room turned out to be the break room, complete with refrigerator and microwave. Once they took their seats, it was just Jake and Bonnie staring at Tom across a metal table. On the other side of the door, the chief and FBI agents stood guard over the sharp kitchen utensils.

  Jake would love to pull out a voice recorder, but recordings were against FBI policy. Instead, he needed a second agent present to take notes.

  “Whatever you say may not be used against you in a court of law,” Jake began, reversing the normal Miranda rights. “If you cooperate with us and your story checks out, a judge will look more favorably on your case. Do you understand?”

  The man nodded.

  “Then raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear that what you are about to say is true and correct under penalty of perjury?”

  “I do,” came a whisper.

  He looked the man in the eye.

  “Are you Tom Weaver?”

  The man nodded.

  “I need you to speak so that we can write down what you say. Are you Tom Weaver?”

  “Yes. I am.” The voice came out cracked, as if the man were already broken.

  That was enough for preliminaries, and Jake launched directly into his questioning to find out the suspect’s reason for being in Bill Frost’s house.

  “Why did you break into the house on 100th Street?”

  There was no immediate response. Only downturned eyes.

  “Was it a burglary?”

  The guy shook his head.

  “Was it a burglary?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Thank you. Were you acting on your own volition?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then who told you to do this?”

  “My boss.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “I work for a company in Salt Lake City.”

  Salt Lake City was three hundred miles north of that sleepy little hamlet.

  So Jake dug in further and got an interesting story on the record.

  It turned out that the intruder worked for a global mining group named Kingston-Maes S.A. that was based in Brussels. He learned that the best expertise for mining was found in the United States, so the firm relied heavily on mining engineers in Utah, a major hub for the American mining industry.

  Weaver was employed as a mine security guard and had been deployed at various overseas operations. Already in his young working life, he had worked in South Africa, Australia, and Indonesia, with rest and relaxation between assignments back in the States.

  Jake was impressed.

  Weaver had first broken into Bill Frost’s house on Monday, looking for evidence that might implicate the mining company.

  “What are they trying to hide?” Jake asked.

  Weaver shrugged. “Anything with their name on it.”

  According to the young man’s account, no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find any papers with the mining company’s name on it.

  “What’s the name of your boss who ordered this break-in?”

  The guy balked.

  “Are you cooperating with me or not? Your sentencing will depend on how forthcoming you are.”

  “His name is Oscar Schultz. He’s German.”

  “Where is he based?”

  “At headquarters in Salt Lake City.”

  “Go on. You came back to the house this morning. What were you looking for this time?”

  “Last night I got a call from someone I didn’t know. He asked me to return a second time to remove any evidence of their work in China.”

  “What w
as he worried about?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Why would he be worried about the China file?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “Where is the file now?”

  “I burned it.”

  “That was a lot of paper,” Jake said, remembering the huge gap in the filing cabinet.

  “It took awhile.”

  “Is everything gone?”

  The man nodded.

  “Is everything gone?” Jake repeated, louder.

  “I burned it in my fire pit. It’s nothing but ashes now.”

  Jake glanced out the glass door, and an agent departed immediately, presumably to check out the fire pit.

  “What did the file say?”

  The man shrugged. “I’m no engineer or economist. I didn’t even bother to look at it.”

  “Who called you? Who sent you to the house a second time?”

  “I don’t know his name.”

  “Does he work for the company?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think so.”

  “Who does he work for?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Then why did you do what he said? It was illegal. You could go to prison for it.”

  “I checked with my boss, and he told me to go ahead and do whatever the man said.”

  “State for the record the name of your boss who told you to go ahead with whatever the man said.”

  “Schultz. Oscar Schultz.”

  “And the name of his company?”

  “Kingston-Maes.”

  In addition to Bonnie’s taking notes, Jake jotted the names down.

  “What can you tell me about the man who sent you the second time? Do you know his name?”

  “No.”

  “What kind of voice?”

  “American.”

  “What kind of accent did he have?”

  “I would say country. Maybe Southern.”

  “Could you identify the voice in a recording?”

  The man nodded.

  “Speak up.”

  “Sure.”

  Jake called an end to the interview. The witness hadn’t handed him a smoking gun, but he did give Jake plenty to go on.

  The story was intriguing enough, a mining company so worried about its reputation that it tried to cover up any relation to an environmentalist who had been reportedly killed in Mongolia.

  Jake’s next step was clear. Return to Salt Lake City and bring Oscar Schultz in for questioning.