by Bob Blanton
“I might as well see what happens. We might get a read on where Graham’s head is. Nobody has really interviewed him yet.”
“No. Aren’t he and his lawyer yelling their heads off?”
“A little. The prosecutor has gone over most of the evidence with them. I think he’s going to try to pass himself off as the bag-man. He just handled the money and had no idea that it was from drugs.”
“Is there a chance he’ll get away with it?”
“There’s always a chance. But they don’t know we found the keys or the pills, so he’s in for a rude awakening.”
“I hope so. But you should wait to confront him until after his son’s next visit.”
“Why?”
“Because his son just told him on Friday that his offshore account is empty. On the next visit, he’s going to be telling him that his offshore corporation has a new owner and he cannot access the assets.”
“At which point he’s going to realize that he cannot afford that fancy lawyer he’s got,” Agent Peters said. “I like the way you think. We’ll make a real investigator out of you yet.”
Matthew laughed. “I want to be a computer scientist, not a cop.”
“Hey, everyone needs a hobby,” Emily said as she nudged Matthew.
“Okay. Let’s eat. I’ll let you know when the kid’s next visit is.”
“It’s supposed to be on Wednesday. Anyway, that’s the time the lawyer asked for.”
Agent Peters shook her head. “You’re a real smart-ass aren’t you?”
“Better than being a dumb-ass.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“Well?” Graham demanded when his son sat down opposite him in the visitor room at the federal detention center.
Jerome Graham shook his head. “Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?”
“I couldn’t find it. I got back a ‘no longer exists’ message when I tried to log in.”
“Did you try contacting Vicente?”
“Yes. He replied with a message saying the corporation I was inquiring about no longer exists. When I asked about the assets, he said privacy laws prevented him from disclosing what happened to them.”
“Shit, how can this be happening?”
“I don’t know, but it looks like someone cleaned you out. Is there anywhere else I should look?”
“No, that’s everything. The feds already seized all the things I had in the house. Now, there is some money the feds can’t touch. Your trust fund.”
“What trust fund?”
“Your mother set up a trust fund for you when she left. You turn eighteen next week. Then you’ll have access to it. There’s enough money in it to pay for an attorney. At least enough to pay for one to free up some of my other assets. I’ll pay you back.”
“She set up a trust fund for me?! You said she just left!”
“She did!”
“Now I don’t believe you.” Jerome stood up and turned to leave.
“You little shit!” Graham pounded his fist on the glass. The deputy entered the room on Graham’s side and escorted him away. Jerome shook his head as he left. “Serves the bastard right,” he muttered as he left.
Matthew’s curiosity was piqued so he followed Jerome out of the custody center. Jerome left his car at the MCC and walked two blocks to a Mexican café. Once he got a table, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed.
The call was answered with “Graham, Sawyers, and Associates.”
“Is Lara Graham in?”
“Just a moment, may I ask who’s calling?”
“Jerome Graham.”
“Jerome! I’ve been worried about you.”
“Hi, Mom. Sorry I haven’t called.”
“I understand. How are you doing?”
“I’m staying with Dalton, they’re being nice.”
“I knew that. Stacy keeps me updated on you.”
“Oh. . . . I should have figured that. Dad told me about the trust fund.”
“He had to. You turn eighteen next week.”
“He wants to borrow money from it.”
“Jerome, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“No shit!”
“Jerome!”
“Sorry. I’m just so confused.”
“What can I do?”
“Were you telling the truth about him beating you up?”
“Yes. I had to leave. I was sure he’d kill me the next time.”
“And the trust fund?”
“My half of the settlement.”
“So, he’s been lying to me the whole time.”
“I expect he has.”
“What should I do?”
“Stay with the Abramses, finish school, go to college.”
“You don’t want me to come live with you?”
“Of course I do. But not in the middle of your senior year. I wouldn’t want you to do that. I’ll be able to come visit.”
Matthew closed his portal. He felt bad about listening in, but he felt he needed to know what the story with Mr. Graham was. The next day, he let Agent Peters know that Mr. Graham would be in a perfect mood for her upcoming visit.
◆ ◆ ◆
“Mr. Graham, I’m Agent Peters with the DEA and this is Detective Vaughn with the San Diego Police. We have a few questions.”
Graham blanched upon hearing Agent Peters’ name. He stared at her, unable to believe his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Graham, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Is there something bothering you?”
“No, . . . no, just wondering what Detective Vaughn is here for,” Mr. Graham said, struggling to regain his composure.
“And this is your lawyer, Mr. Malone?”
“Yes.”
Agent Peters read Mr. Graham his rights and had him sign a card saying he understood them.
“We’re recording this interview.”
Mr. Graham snorted. “Why do you keep wasting your time? I’ve told you I know nothing about any drugs.”
“We’ve heard you. We now have some new evidence. Maybe that will jog your memory.”
Agent Peters pulled a plastic bag with the mailbox keys in it. “We discovered these keys in your house.”
“Never seen them.” Graham’s lawyer touched him on the arm to remind him to stay quiet.
“Interesting. We have examined these mailboxes and found more books with money in them. We also found some teenagers that say a man matching your description would come by once a week and have them go get his mail for him. One at each location matching one of these keys. They said they typically brought the man ten to twelve packages.
“Still nothing? Well, we’ve traced the senders of those packages, and they have made statements to the effect that they sent those packages as payments for the drugs they received. Those drugs were mailed inside of shoeboxes just like the ones we found on the plane. In fact, the eight shoeboxes that we documented were on the plane were addressed to mailboxes belonging to eight of these distributors.”
Mr. Graham just shook his head.
“We also have a Hector Velazquez, who will testify that he was the one who shipped those shoeboxes on your orders.”
Mr. Graham just smiled.
“No, not that Hector Velazquez, but the one who stays with his wife up in Thousand Oaks when he’s not off recruiting more dealers for you.” Matthew had done a quick look in the house in Thousand Oaks and found men’s clothing, so Agent Peters was pretty confident in her bluff. And by the look on Mr. Graham’s face, she had nailed it.
“I assume the other Hector was your way of making sure that Mr. Velazquez would be free to run errands for you while he was still on parole. And now, I’m sure it helps keep him off the radar.
“No, comment? . . .” Agent Peters smiled and waited a full minute before continuing.
“We also made another interesting discovery at your home.” Agent Peters laid out four separate evidence bags. Each of them had thirty to forty pills in them. “A very clever hidi
ng place. But we found it. Now we have a direct connection between you and the drugs.”
Mr. Graham gulped but still stayed silent. His lawyer wasn’t looking too happy.
“Now the last nail,” Matthew whispered to Emily.
“You know, when we tested these pills we discovered something interesting. Each bag contains counterfeit Oxycontin pills that are made with Fentanyl. And as expected, one of the bags contains pills that are identical to the samples we pulled from the pallets on the plane before you destroyed them.
“But what’s even more interesting is that the other three bags contain pills of different strengths. They’re different, but the pills in each bag are identical to the other pills in that bag. Now, one bag has pills that are half the strength as the ones being sold by the dealers sending you money. Another has pills that are fifty percent stronger, and the last bag contains pills that are six times stronger, guaranteed to kill anyone who takes it.”
Now Graham was really sweating.
Detective Vaughn leaned forward. “Now, that got my attention. You see, a woman was killed a few weeks ago. We found a bottle of pills that were a mixture of those four strengths. Not a random distribution of strengths that you might find from a poorly controlled process that most street dealers use, but exactly the four strengths that were found in your house. And Ms. Frye was killed after taking one of those pills.”
“I’ve never met anyone named Frye,” Graham hissed, finally breaking his silence.
“I’m sure you’ve never met. But you are the one who instructed Mr. Velazquez to take a package of pills and place it under the hood of Ms. Frye’s car, right up against the windshield, along with a flyer to alert her that the pills were there. We have a surveillance video showing the pickup that Mr. Velazquez drives making its way down the street where Ms. Frye lives.
“Now, he’s alternating between saying he didn’t know there were drugs in the bag and saying that he didn’t drive down there, but how long do you think it will take him to settle on one story?” Detective Vaughn pointed at the photographs that he’d laid on the table. One showed the pickup with the license plate clearly in view. A second showed the driver wearing a baseball cap and some glasses that helped to obscure his face.
Agent Peters slapped the table with her hand. “You know, I recognize that pickup. It’s the same pickup that you drove to Dana Point before you took the ferry to Catalina. How much would you bet that your fingerprints are in that pickup? It’s pretty hard to recognize the driver here. Maybe Velazquez is telling the truth. Maybe you drove down there and dropped those drugs under Ms. Frye’s hood. Detective Vaughn, what do you think?”
“Maybe. It makes sense that he wouldn’t want someone to be able to tie him directly to the murder. I’m sure Velazquez would be happy to testify that Mr. Graham here borrowed his truck on the 13th of September and returned it the next day.”
“I agree. We should definitely pursue that line of questioning with him. Well, Mr. Graham, I think you and your Lawyer have a lot to discuss. I’m sure the federal prosecutor will be happy to help you understand your situation vis-à-vis how the criminal prosecution will work between the federal charges and the state charges. They might even be able to tell you about how your sentences would be handled, which facilities you’d serve your time in.”
With that, Agent Peters and Detective Vaughn left the room.
“She nailed him. Did you see that look on his face?!” Matthew laughed and slapped the kitchen table.
“I did. Do you think he’ll cop a plea before he finds out they don’t have Hector in custody?”
“Maybe, but they definitely have enough to hold him for a long time while they continue to search for Hector. Sooner or later he’s going to want to see his daughters. Then they’ll have him.”
Chapter 18
Wrap Up
The next Friday, Matthew and Emily met with Agent Peters for what they all hoped would be the last time.
“How are you two doing?”
“We’re doing fine; we’re on Christmas break. We’ve finished our term papers. So life’s good,” Matthew said. “How are you doing?”
“Good. I assume you’ve heard that Graham has agreed to a plea deal.”
“Not really, what did he plea to?”
“Second-degree murder and smuggling of illegal drugs. The federal prosecutor and the state prosecutor have agreed to recommend concurrent sentences to be served in a federal penitentiary. They’re asking for twenty-five years.”
“Will the judges approve it?”
“Probably.”
“What about Hector?”
“Oh, you didn’t hear. He came in. Agreed to testify.”
“What will happen to him?”
“Five years. He didn’t know Graham wanted to kill Frye. He just assumed he was closing the deal that was broken up at the Starbucks.”
“What about Dante?”
“We seized his money, although I suspect he has more hidden somewhere. He agreed to testify and took a three-year suspended sentence.”
“And Frankie?”
“Nobody wants to go after him. Too big a mess. The San Diego Police don’t want to drag up the police brutality issue again.”
“Cool,” Emily said. “Now, Matt, how about you tell us what you did with the property in the Cayman Islands?”
“Umm . . .”
“Totally off the record,” Agent Peters said. “I’m as curious as Emily is.”
“Well, I moved the assets to a new digital corporation. I had Vicente send a notice to the four women that changes their terms of employment.
“First: it tells them that their escrow will no longer be getting payments and that they should at least wait the four weeks until the first party defaults and it pays out.”
“You mean, Graham won’t be signing off on their carrying money to his bank for him?”
“Yes, I think he’s otherwise engaged.”
“How much is there?” Agent Peters asked.
“The first woman, the blond, has a little over three hundred thousand in the account. She might opt to take the money and do something else. The second woman has about half that. The third woman had seventy thousand and the fourth woman has just over thirty.”
“So what else did you have him tell them?”
“He told them that the company is going to go back to managing the properties as exclusive rentals. They can still stay employed, but the salary has been lowered to five thousand a month plus free use of the guest house and the cars. He’ll also cover legitimate expenses. One car is to be made available to the guests when there are any. They are to maintain the property, arrange cleaning after the guests leave. They also get five percent of whatever the company rents the place for, including if it’s just some party event.”
“What about the one who’s having to manage the construction of the house?”
“She gets an additional four thousand a month.”
“Do you think they’ll take it?” Emily asked.
“I bet they do for at least a year. They would want something lined up before they gave it up. Also, they’re going to get vacation time, so they’ll be able to travel. They were tied to the property and the banks, so no long trips.”
“Hey, it’s a sweet deal. Maybe they can work on their acting. There must be a theater in George Town,” Agent Peters said. “You don’t have another house you need to have managed do you?”
“Not yet, but there are four other properties that still need to be developed. Are you looking for a change?”
“Not really. I’m the golden girl right now. I’ll have to see if I can live up to the reputation we just built.”
“And we’ll be happy to help.”
“Emily!”
“Don’t worry. I want to avoid any skydiving. But you might be able to help me move some money around.” Agent Peters gave them a mischievous smile.
“What?!”
“There are few cartel leaders that might find the
ir situation a little more untenable if they suddenly lost all their offshore money.”
“I don’t know,” Matthew shook his head.
“Just think about it.”
“Come on Matt. You’d like it. You’re like a real James Bond. You even have four gorgeous women working for you. Don’t you agree, Barb?”
“Well, Matt is tall, dark, and handsome. I think he’d make a good James Bond.”
Afterword
Thanks for reading Stone Investigations!
I hope you’ve enjoyed the fourth book in the Stone Series. As a self-published author, the one thing you can do that will help me the most is to leave a review and / or follow me on BookBub, Goodreads, or Amazon.
The story will continue.
Acknowledgments
It is impossible to say how much I am indebted to my beta readers and copy editors. Without them, you would not be able to read my books due to all the grammar and spelling errors. I have always subscribed to Andrew Jackson’s opinion that “It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word.”
So special thanks to:
My copy editor Ann Clark, who also happens to be my wife.
My beta reader and editor, Theresa Holmes.
My beta reader and cheerleader, Roger Blanton, who happens to be my brother.
