Time Flies Ch. 04

I looked over at the Chief, whose face showed he was not going to be of help nor hindrance. "Sure." I said. "Let's go to my office..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I had Miriam Walters sit down and asked if she wanted some water or coffee, which she politely declined. I went around my desk and settled into my comfortable 'Command Chair'. "Okay," I said, "what is it that you can't say in front of the others?"

Miriam said "You may not believe this, but I'm not your enemy. Far from it, I'm more of a friend to you than you realize. Yes, I may have gone overboard on that little test of your Officers at the Luigi's parking lot, but I'll have to ask you to believe me when I say that I did that for your good as well as this County's."

"Taking you at your word," I said, "there are still some 'trust' issues here, to wit: your Investigators seemed to know a lot about drug operations in this area... information you did not share with the TCPD until the Chief all but twisted your arm. And I'm not an Agency of the Weak Minded... what's the real reason you want to hand this off to the Feds? Paulina can easily handle the case. Hell, Hannah Doss or even Savannah Fineman could, and you've been working your ass off getting her the juicy morsels for her Solicitor campaign, and successfully prosecuting this would all but guarantee her election. Yet you want to hand it off. Why?"

Miriam nodded, and I could see in her beady black eyes that she knew a lot more than she was willing to tell. Still, she said "Don... if I may call you 'Don'... there are some things going on... here and in Midtown with the Legislature. The bribery allegations against Judge Watts are pure crap, but they're being treated as serious by people who should not be treating them seriously. And I'm hearing that the shots at him are to neutralize him... so he can't help when they come after you."

"As part of that, and just as Folsom won't give Watts important cases," Miriam continued, "I've been 'warned' (air quotes) that anything you touch might become tainted in the near future. Honest to God, I don't know what they have in mind for you, but they think they have something that can take you down."

"Who is 'they'?" I asked.

"Burt West, Bettina Wurtzburg, basically KXTC." said Miriam. "And certain people in the Legislature."

"Was Katherine Woodburn your source for this information?" I asked, peering at Miriam. Her eyes couldn't help but reveal I'd hit the truth, but she still denied it:

"It's not her that told me this" she said. "But she's longed to take you down since you forced her to give up KXTC all those years ago, even if she does say you're the best fuck she's ever had."

My eyes widened just a bit in surprise, that Katherine would admit that, but women do talk to other women about men, and Laura was not innocent of those charges either.

"Okay, then." I said. "Thanks for telling me. I still think we should keep the murder case, but I won't publicly object if you decide otherwise..."

Part 20 - Issues And Answers (Solution)

Saturday, January 11th. The party was in the back room of The Steakhouse, which the Sheriff had reserved. Most of the Detectives and their spouses were there, and that included the Intelligence Team. Additionally, Joanne and Seth Warner were there with baby Tony, creating a lot of 'ooh'- and 'aah'-ing.

Carole had been invited to attend, and Laura had made a point to make us 'fashionably late'... and upon arrival I realized why. Everyone stopped and gave us an ovation. Some of it was for a recovered Laura, some for Carole, but most of it was for me.

Carole was extremely fascinated with Tony, so we sat with the Warners and Sheriff Griswold. Tony was likewise happy with Carole; he laughed out loud as Carole talked to him. I later told Cindy "I've always wondered if little babies can feel the vibes like you and Carole have. I think Tony is sensing it from Carole." Cindy agreed, saying her father Dr. Eckhart had talked about that, and she'd one day show me a 'fish trick' that would support our thesis.

After the delicious meals were consumed, you all know what happened next: spoon tapped glass as Cindy Ross called for order.

"My patience..." she said, "... is exhausted. Details, Crowbar 1, details." An ovation ensued, sounding like the British House of Commons at 'Question Time'.

I stood up and said "It was a team effort. You all did a lot of hard work and found out a lot of information------"

"Wrong answer!" called out Captain Tanya Perlman. "With all due respect to the rest of us, I watched it come together in your red head, Commander!" More 'House of Commons' cheering.

"Really," I said, "you guys made a lot of good observations and found out a lot of information. For example, one thing that you, Captain Perlman, kept asking was who had reduced Hamm's charges. Turns out Merkle was behind that, though he somehow kept it from being known that it was him. And Intelligence and Myron Milton's I.T. Department found and decoded the texts, which was huge."

"And again with all due respect to the rest of the team," Cindy Ross said, "it was the Iron Crowbar that put it together and went and made the arrests... including of one dirty DEA Agent that no one else had any idea was the murderer of Carl Fisher." More acclaim. Can I run for Prime Minister? I thought to myself.

"All right, all right." I said. "So let's go through it. We found a body that had been moved where we would easily find it, and by an operation that was a bit complex and actually pretty risky. The best Detective in the Troy household noticed that the time was wrong..." Applause for Carole broke out. My beaming daughter and I shared a fist-bump.

"And from there we began looking into it." I continued. "And you guys in Intelligence really came through with good information about Mr. Fisher, including finding out his real identity of Carlton Bellows. We subsequently got onto James Hamm's identity and role in all this pretty quickly. But then... some roadblocks cropped up.

Me: "We had a good bit of data, but it didn't seem to connect in any reasonable way. As an example, some of you correctly figured out that the '40a' in the code meant 40 minutes ahead, but I dismissed it too quickly because his watch was actually 40 minutes behind. I incorrectly surmised that Fisher had read the code wrong and set his watch the wrong way. I also completely missed the significance of the fact that Fisher had never forwarded the texts nor sent the codes to anyone else... except his own cellphone that was in his name."

Your Iron Crowbar: "So let's talk about Fisher for a second. Carlton Bellows had pretty much retired as Jimmy Cerone's broker when Cerone went as legit as a State Legislator can be. Bellows had done well with Cerone's money... so we thought... but when Orrin B. Taggart declined to use him for Taggart's investments, I should have seen that as the red flag it was. Bellows didn't really do particularly well with the investments, and the venture capital investments did okay but took too long to mature. So he did some drug deals on the side to boost his profits. And that's when he created the Carl Fisher identity."

Me: "Having the second identity showed his flair for the dramatic, and he played the role of a garbage man with a Series 7 certification. How he hooked up with Hamm, I'm not sure, though back in those days criminals used a... Consultant... to help them with their schemes. And that's where Hamm comes in."

Me: "Hamm was using Fisher as his human shield, which is a very Consultant-'ish' idea. Hamm never sent a text with codes or anything else related to drugs. And I was running around trying to find any way to get a warrant to get into his texts and emails, but never could."

Me: "But back to Fisher: I'm still not sure why he did it, but he decided to do a drug deal himself by frontrunning Hamm's deal. That turned out to be a bad idea, because the man dealing drugs with Hamm was the man who'd tried to recruit Fisher as a C.I... Fred Merkle."

Me: "I'd realized something was wrong about Merkle's story of recruiting Fisher as a C.I., and I even told Merkle that straight to his face. Fisher never needed Merkle for anything, but at the time I didn't think that a DEA Agent might be part of the problem. In reality, that's what happened: Fisher had rejected Merkle as a DEA Agent, but when Merkle suggested Fisher work for him on real drug deals, Fisher agreed... or pretended to."

Me: "Truth is, Merkle didn't know Fisher and Hamm were working together, and Hamm didn't know of Merkle's contact with Fisher. So Fisher went to the drug deal himself after putting out an 'abort' signal to Hamm, and Hamm again did not know Fisher knew that signal. And then... Fisher found Merkle was the contact when they met to do the deal."

Me: "Merkle immediately saw that something was wrong, and shot Fisher with his service weapon, then told other DEA Agents that it was a deal gone wrong and Fisher tried to kill Merkle. Merkle convinced them to help move Fisher's body, which they did. But Merkle made a mistake. He thought Fisher must've set his watch ahead, since Fisher was there at the deal at the time and place in the code. But Fisher didn't know it, and never set his watch. And Merkle then set it back, thinking he was setting it to the correct time."

Me: "I might add here that I had some data that Jackson Ripley was increasingly worried about what was going on. He knew what had happened, but was ordered by his superior, Merkle, to not say anything because they'd try another drug deal. And when Dwight Stevens, who is one of the good guys even though he won't trust me, said they were going forward with the deal, Ripley went along. But he said something to someone about his reservations, and that got back to me."

After a pause, I then said "So, all our efforts to connect Hamm to Fisher's murder were failing, and rightly so. And it was when George Newman made the comment that maybe the DEA had set up the roadblock that everything just suddenly fell into place for me, and literally in an instant."

I continued: "I realized almost unconsciously that the DEA could pull off something like that, and as part of a sting or other operation. And then it hit me that Fisher's watch was 40 minutes behind because it had been set wrong after he'd been shot. At this split-instant in my mind, it still could've been Hamm that had done that... but Hamm was not a DEA Agent; Merkle was! And Fred Merkle had reduced Hamm's charges, like Captain Perlman kept asking about. And then it hit me that Merkle wasn't Hamm's handler, but his supplier!"

Me: "And the final thing that convinced me that it was Merkle was that the DEA's standard-issue service weapon is the Glock 17 or Glock 19... both nine millimeter handguns. And Fisher was shot with a nine millimeter handgun."

"So when all that hit me like a ton of bricks," I said, "I ran out of MCD and to the Federal Building. Stevens wouldn't tell me where the drug deal was going down... trust issues, dontcha know... but someone else had the key info that led us to the homing device Ripley had swallowed as a precaution. We were too late to save Ripley, but I did manage to find the nine millimeter that shot Fisher where I expected to find it... on Fred Merkle's person. And as the late, great Paul Harvey used to say... now you know the rest of the story."

In the silence of the room that followed, I said "Any questions?" Laughter erupted.

"Daddy," Carole said, "why did they move him after they shot him?" Six years old, I marveled to myself.

"That's a very good question." I said, then turned to everyone and said: "My answer is that they wanted us to find him, and not where they shot him. The parking lots and the mall were already established, and it would take Merkle time to create new locations and disseminate that information. So he wanted to preserve that information. He didn't know that Fisher had sent himself the coded texts, as a precaution in case something went sideways for him, as it ultimately did.

I continued: "And I don't know this for sure, but it's possible that he knew that when the news of the body being found came out, it would cause Hamm and his customers to batten down the hatches and be more careful. And last, he might've told the others that knew he'd shot Fisher that by moving the body we'd find it, so they wouldn't have to compromise their operation."

"I like that last idea." growled Sheriff Griswold. "So why did Miriam Walters hire Jackson Ripley to try to entrap our Officers? Who was behind that? Who suggested him to her?"

"It certainly is interesting that she chose him, of all people, isn't it?" I replied. "To be fair, it could've been an innocent and coincidental thing. I know that Ripley knew Artis Lattimore, who Miriam had already hired. And she knows people who could've suggested it. But I think the bigger question is why Miriam wanted to 'test' (air quotes) the TCPD. Something's not right about that. Any other questions?"

Teresa Croyle asked "So tell us what the drug flow was? And who Hamm was selling the drugs to?"

I said "The coded texts were orders sent to Hamm via Fisher's burners. We, meaning me and the FBI and DEA, think he was supplying the 'Smooth White Boys', who are the suppliers of the dime bags on Campus. Hamm is a White Supremacist, and so might've created connections to the Smooth White Boys because of that. Hamm was supplied by Merkle, who just called Hamm via their mutual landlines... believe it or not, cellphones are much easier to track than landline calls are. They still talked in code, so any bugged or intercepted messages would be difficult to understand.

I finished up: "And I won't say any more at this time on exactly how the drugs were moved, since the DEA, SBI-IDE, and our Vice Squad are still working on all that. What we caught was a middleman operation, and we still have the bookends to work on."

Julia Rodriguez spoke up: "So tell us once again how you realized Fisher's watch was set backwards after the fact, not before going to the drug buy?"

"The theory fit the facts better than any other ideas." I said. "When Myron was showing us the codes, he had them stacked one on top of the other, so I got this dumb idea that Fisher misread the code, maybe one line above. But of course each text on the phone would be in a separate bubble, so what I was thinking didn't make much sense at all."

"And like I said," I went on, "it all just hit me at once, and I just knew. It's like when Mike Vick was asked what he was thinking when he made some of his great runs, and he said he wasn't really consciously thinking about it, it just happened, he responded, and he only thought about it after he'd scored the touchdown."

"Theorizing without data, were we now?" Micah Rudistan asked with a great deal of joviality. Several people chuckled.

"No." I mused. "We had the data. I just wasn't reading it right. I was too busy trying to fit square pegs into round holes. But once I heard George's comment, it was like a supersaturated salt solution suddenly crystallizing when tapped."

"So... who wants to be a Detective on the Town & County Police Force?" asked Jerome Davis, meaning it jovially. A lot of people laughed.

"I do!" Carole Troy said cheerfully, raising her little hand high. That brought the house down... and made Daddy very proud.

Part 21 - Epilogue

Monday, January 13th. DEA Supervisory Special Agent Dwight Stevens came to my office with FBI SAC Jack Muscone. Jack excused himself and said he'd be in my Captain of Detective's office.

I did not invite Stevens to sit down, but just peered at him. He said "I came to apologize to you. I should've told you where the drug deal was. I should've kept you, and Jack Muscone, in the loop, and told you what we were doing far earlier than I did."

I nodded in acknowledgement of the message, but made sure to note my lack of acceptance by saying "It is obvious you still hold grudges over the Marcie Harper case. I've always been a bit patient with you because of the way that went down, but I also expected you to realize that I do know what the hell I'm doing."

"But no longer." I continued. "My patience has run out. If you want successful results... and credit for any drug-related issues in this County, you'd better start showing me some respect, and some cooperation. If you don't, find another State to work in." With that, I turned myself in my chair to put my back to him. I looked out the window as Stevens wordlessly turned and exited my office.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Tuesday, January 14th. Somewhat to my surprise, Teresa Croyle came to my office... with her husband, BOW Enterprises CEO and my nephew, Todd Burke. "We need to talk to you, sir." Teresa said.

I had them sit down in the hot chairs. "Whassup?" I said. Teresa made the sign for me to turn on the bug-killer. I did so.

Todd said "Uncle Don, you remember George the contractor, who rebuilt your Cabin and then built our house next door?"

"Sure." I said.

"He called me this morning." Todd said. "He said that yesterday he was visited by two Agents of the FBI, a woman and a man. They asked him about your Cabin. At first George asked what it was about, did they have a warrant, stuff like that. So the Agents immediately began threatening him. They said they'd shut his business down, have the IRS audit his business and his personal taxes, which would take months, and threatened to arrest him for Interfering with a Federal Investigation."

"Wow." I said. "What did he do?"

"He capitulated." Todd said. "I can't really blame him; he's a small businessman, and he doesn't have the resources BOW Enterprises does. Anyway, they asked about the details of your Cabin. He said the floor plans were on file with the Town & County, as per requirements. The Agents told him that if he gave them one more word of backtalk, they'd arrest him immediately." I nodded.

Todd: "Then the male Agent began asking specifically about any hidden or underground spaces. George told them that you'd had fire escape stairs installed. Then they pressed harder, and he admitted that there had been a wine cellar that you didn't have filled in, and could still be there. The Agents then said that if George said one word to you, they'd come and arrest him, and they left. George was too scared to call you directly, in case they're monitoring his phones, so he called me instead."

"Hmmm." I said thoughtfully. "Did they ask about your home at all?" I asked.

"No." said Todd. "Just your Cabin. But to that point, I heard from a source in City Hall that two Federal Agents, both males, came in and looked up the floor plans of your Cabin as well as the Mountain Nest. But apparently not our new house."

I nodded thoughtfully, then said "Did the Agents that accosted George give their names?"

"No," said Todd. "But George recognized the man. Said he recognized him as a former TCPD Detective."

I looked at Teresa, who looked back at me. "Martin Nash." she said...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"This is Bettina Wurtzburg, KXTC Channel Two News!" shouted the redheaded MILF reporterette at 7:00am, Friday, January 17th, from the rooftop of the building on the corner of Riverside and College, with City Hall in the distant background. "The D.A.'s Office turns the Fisher and Ripley murders over to the Feds!"

Bettina began: "In a decision that shows her lack of confidence in Commander Donald Troy's Town & County Police Force, District Attorney Miriam Walters agreed to turn over jurisdiction of the murders of Carl Fisher and Jackson Ripley to the FBI. Jackson Ripley was a DEA Agent when he was murdered, and the FBI and DEA have charged rogue DEA Agent Fred Merkle with the murder of Mr. Fisher, an employee of the University Sanitation Department."