Incentive for Death, page 11
Jerry pulled an envelope of eight by ten color photos. Jerry pointed at the bottom right corner of the photos. “Each of these has a date and time stamp. He pointed to one of the photos. “We are pretty sure this is Eugene Rollins going into the john. And we think this guy next to him is the person who followed him in. As you can see, he is white and wearing a Nationals cap.”
“Well, that’s the back side of those two men,” Oliver said. “Do we have one of the guy leaving the restroom?”
Faircloth nodded. “Yep. It’s this picture here. Per the time stamps, no one else left until the second guy who came out to get the security guard. There’s no picture of Rollins exiting the restroom for obvious reasons.”
I couldn’t resist. “Brilliant.”
Rae Davis rolled her eyes at me. Kind of an unspoken communication that said, See what I put up with? I suppressed a grin.
Faircloth resumed the tale. “We got an enlargement of this picture to get a better look at this guy’s face. As you can see, the top half of his face is kind of shadowed by the bill of his cap.” It was a clear shot, except for the part from the eyes upward.
Rae said, “So we sat down with the guy running their video system and asked him to try to track this guy from that point forward. Since we had a precise time to work with, he checked the cameras in both directions on that level. We quickly found him, although he had apparently ditched his cap. Here’s that picture.” She pointed to another enlargement.
“How can you be sure it’s the same guy?” Oliver asked.
“Mainly by comparing the clothes. Both guys had on a Nationals jersey over khaki pants. Both guys had on blue running shoes. It helped that there were not a lot of people on that concourse at that particular time. So, we followed him from camera to camera and printed pictures each time.” She pointed out those photos. “We followed him until he went out of one of the exit gates. Unfortunately, none of the cameras in the parking lot caught him getting in a car, which would have been a big help in getting an identification. But we have a pretty good set of facial photos. Plus, leaving in the third or fourth inning kind of cinches it.”
I said, “Great work, guys. We’ll have to see if our sometimes friends at the Bureau can run him through their facial recognition system. We’ll do the same with the woman we caught leaving the law office building.”
Jerry Faircloth added, “Once we had the names and addresses of the other men in the restroom, we got copies of their driver’s licenses so we could compare their pictures. Clearly, none of them were the guy we’ve focused on here. Also, only the guy who fetched the security guard came out, and he returned with the guard. I don’t think any of them are the person responsible.”
“We also got their video guy to burn us copies of the closed-circuit tapes,” Rae added as she handed us an envelope containing several thumb drives.
We paused for a minute and looked at the pictures. “Moving on,” I said to Rae and Jerry. “Anything tying Rollins to Weldon Van Damm?”
Rae Davis responded. “Before we went to Nationals Park, we called the M.E.’s office and found that they had Rollins’ wallet. We asked them to text us copies of his driver’s license and his emergency contact card.
“Once we had finished at Nationals Park, we called Rollins’ wife. Her name is Teresa. She was home, so we drove straight there. They live in Rosecroft Village in Oxon Hill, which is in Prince Georges County, just across the line from Southeast D.C.”
“Near Rosecroft Raceway, I assume?” asked Oliver.
Rae nodded. “Not far at all. It’s a medium-priced townhome development. She’s a fortyish mother of two early teenage boys. Still very much in shock.”
Faircloth pulled out his notes. “Eugene Rollins was forty-three years old. He went by Gene. No health problems. He was a civil engineer with a medium-sized engineering firm in Temple Hills. Mrs. Rollins seemed to respond best to Rae, so she took the lead in talking with her.”
I turned to Rae Davis and extended an upturned palm, giving her the floor. Rae said, “She had no idea of anyone who would want to do her husband harm. She said he was an easygoing guy. Typical engineer.
“She also said she had never heard of Van Damm or the law firm of Gideon and McCaffery. She said they had never hired a lawyer for anything. Their house closings were done by a title insurance company recommended by the realtor.
“They’ve been married about fifteen years. Until about five months ago she worked as a project coordinator for a large construction company that built apartment complexes. She said the bottom dropped out of that market, and her employer had to cut back, so they laid some people off, including her.
“She said her income roughly equaled her husband’s, so they had to get by on half of what they’d been making before. Both of their sons are in a private school. In the end, they sold their house and bought the small townhouse in Rosecroft Village, which was about half the price. While that cut their overhead on the mortgage payments, they didn’t have much equity in the house they had to sell.
“In the end, they decided to sell their life insurance policy on Gene Rollins.”
“Wait … sorry to interrupt,” I said, “but our case also involved the sale of life insurance policies. How big was Rollins’ policy?”
“His wife said it was a half-million-dollar policy that her husband took out fourteen years ago when their first son was born. Gene was only twenty-nine years old at that time and got it dirt cheap. They sold it to one of those companies that advertises about buying life insurance policies. They got $100,000 and got rid of the premiums. She said it pretty much replaced a year’s worth of her lost income.”
The wrinkles on my forehead moved up. “Huh,” I said. “Did you find out who bought it?”
“No, but I’ll call her and find out. I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks, guys, good job,” I said. “Appreciate you jumping on it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
AS SOON AS WE got back to our desks, Oliver said, “As Sherlock Holmes would say: ‘Huh.’ That was progress.” I knew exactly what he meant.
I saw a number of heads turning down the row of desks and looked to see what was drawing their attention—a very attractive lady with shoulder-length blonde hair. She was thirty-ish and about 5’10” although her heels made her seem even taller. I had to agree with the unspoken sentiment of my colleagues.
The lady walked up to us and introduced herself. “I’m Simone Reese, from Brady Pollard’s shop.” The financial person previously unnamed. If I weren’t semi-divorced and semi-married, I definitely could’ve been semi-interested.
We both stood and introduced ourselves. I slid a chair over from a neighboring desk. Seemed like the gentlemanly thing to do.
She got right to it. “So, you want a rough breakdown on Weldon Van Damm’s financial situation?”
We both nodded and managed to keep our tongues from hanging out of our mouths or drooling. We know how to be professional, when necessary.
Oliver and I sat down after she had taken the chair I provided. I asked, “So, what do you have so far?”
She handed us each a typed summary of several pages stapled together. She also had a copy in front of her.
“Short version is that the man was quite wealthy. I’ll give you the CliffsNotes version.”
I interrupted. “You may not know it, but I went to the University of Nebraska. CliffsNotes was started in Lincoln by a guy named Cliff who worked in the university bookstore.”
She looked at me for a second. “Wow. Thanks for that factoid.”
Was that a put-down?
She returned to her notes and began again. “First, let’s start with his law firm of Gideon & McCaffery. The partners of the firm each own a percentage of the stock of the firm, but the original five partners each had 20 percent of the stock when the firm was founded. As partners left the firm either by death, retirement, or otherwise, that partner’s shares of stock were split among the remaining partners based on the percentage of the stock they each held.
“As best I can tell from Van Damm’s financial statements, he held 28 percent of the law firm’s stock at his death. Based on his financial statements over recent years, he estimated that stock to be worth about $800,000.
“In addition, he made $900,000 to $1,100,000 per year over the last several years. I got those figures from his federal tax returns, which Brady’s people gathered during the search of his residence.
“His most recent bank statement from Wells Fargo says he has $178,000 in cash in his checking account.
“Also, he and his firm made maximum annual contributions to his 401(k) retirement account, which is managed by Charles Schwab. His most recent IRA statement said he has $8.2 million in that account.
“His row house on Riggs Street is free and clear. The Tax Assessor has it valued for property taxes at $1,600,000. That’s probably low.
“Then there’s a bunch of privately held companies in which he owned a portion of the stock. It is hard to value stock in companies that are not publicly traded. On his personal financial statements, he showed these stocks to be worth about a combined total of $1,500,000. I figure that number is lower than reality as part of playing the estate planning game.
“But then comes the big Mama Jama. It’s a company called Portland Life Solutions, which appears to be a viatical company that buys life insurance policies. He is a limited partner in twelve different Portland funds. Those appear to be funds that Portland created to raise money to buy the life insurance policies. His percentage ownership in each of those funds appears to be about 15 percent.
“On his financial statements and tax returns, he valued his Portland partnership interests at …” She paused. “Get this … $8.7 million.”
My eyes went wide, and Oliver said, “Holy cow!”
She said, “Yeah. That was my reaction, too.”
I asked, “So, how does that give someone a motive to murder him?”
She nodded. “Who inherits?”
“His two grown children,” Oliver said. “Guess we’re going to have to look closer at them.”
Her eyebrows went up to their limit. As if she were a mind reader, she said, “Huh.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Oliver glance at me while he gave me a one-sided smile.
Simone said, “Conventional logic is always to follow the money. I have a gut feeling that we should look deeper at the Portland funds. Don’t really know why. Just a feeling.”
“Okay,” I replied. “Would you chase that rabbit and let us know what you turn up?”
“Even though that is a mixed metaphor?”
I was becoming intimidated by this lady. “Can I ask how you got into this game?”
She smiled. “I’m a CPA by training. In fact,” she addressed Oliver, “I worked for six years at the same firm where your wife works. Jewell and I were both in the audit department. She was there before me, and we didn’t run into each other much. But I kind of knew her.”
“Surely you could have made a lot more money in private accounting,” Oliver said.
“Sure, but I was bored to death. I saw a placement notice for this job and interviewed. The variety sounded like a lot more fun. So, I up and quit the accounting firm. Plus, I inherited a good chunk of money around the same time. Go figure. Here I am.”
“Well, we’re kind of stuck,” I said. “No obvious suspects are cropping up. Follow the thread you are sensing on the Portland funds and see if you can weave something together that will help us.”
She smiled. “At least that metaphor is not mixed.” She stood and returned the chair to the neighboring desk. “And I knew the history of CliffsNotes anyway. Who could get through college literature classes without them?” And she walked out of the room with an even larger group of detectives watching her exit than those who had caught her entrance. I had a sense that she knew it and was eating up the attention.
Oliver looked at me with a serene smile similar to Buddha.
“Well, I thought I was going to have to fetch the defibrillator from the hallway.”
“What?”
He had kind of a smirk on his face. “She had your number from the start. I could hear your heart beating from over here.”
“Hah. Just proves that I’m not dead yet.”
“Uh-huh.” And he leaned back and smiled again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I FELT THE NEED to change the subject. “So, what do we do next? Seems the first thing is to get someone going on the facial recognition of the lady from the parking garage and the guy at the ballpark.”
“Want to go through channels and try the Bureau? Or use Frisco?” Oliver asked.
The FBI was always a hassle and sometimes not very cooperative. Depended on whether they needed you at the time.
Frisco was one of the guys we work out with at Buster’s gym. He was a 5’5” fireplug of a guy with lots of muscle and tattoos on his black skin. My first encounter with Frisco at the gym came sometime after I had bought my first fixer-upper near Oliver’s house in Northeast D.C.
Oliver and I had resumed our workouts together at a nearby pig iron gym in a recycled mom-and-pop grocery store that had been closed for years. Oliver had been a regular there before I moved back to the States.
The folks who worked out there were mostly African American and reflected the neighborhood where the gym was located on 21st Street NE in the shadow of the Robert F. Kennedy Stadium. It was not a big gym and, while it had a few weight machines, it was primarily free weights. Neither of us was bulky like most weight lifters. We just wanted to stay in shape without the torture of running.
Oliver and I usually rode there together. We both had to sign in on a clipboard and pay ten dollars each visit. I just signed in as Willy, which is what the regulars called me. I was welcomed as a friend of Oliver’s. Different people would bring in a CD to play while they worked out. The other lifters offered open critiques of the music, so the owner would know whether to ever bring that particular CD back again.
After I had become a semi-regular with Oliver, I took in a CD by David Sanborn, the saxophonist. It was much mellower than the rock and hip-hop normally brought in and didn’t seem to go with the crowd of sweaty weight lifters but, surprisingly, they actually liked it. I think it was just the change of pace.
One of the regulars whom everyone called Frisco said to me, “You sure you aren’t part Black?”
I smiled back and said, “Well, my father’s middle name is Washington.” Which is actually true.
That drew a fair number of laughs, and Frisco said I now had to sign in as Willy Washington. Which I did after that.
Frisco became a casual friend. Over time, Oliver and I learned that he was a hacker of some considerable talent, and he would occasionally help us out on a case.
Frisco never told anyone his entire name. Or whether he was self-employed or working for some government organization, although I doubted the latter. A lot of times in D.C., it could be both.
“Frisco,” was my immediate response to Oliver’s question about whether to use the Bureau. No paperwork. No bureaucracy. We just traded favors from time to time.
Oliver pulled his personal cell and dialed Frisco’s number. “Hey, Frisco, Oliver here. Got something where we need your assistance … Yeah. Got a couple video screen grabs and need some facial recognition.” He listened some more. “Sure, we can be there in about thirty minutes. Thanks, man.”
“He can give us an immediate audience,” Oliver announced. “At his place.”
We packed up copies of our screen grab pictures and the thumb drives with the original closed-circuit footage and headed to my Jeep. We drove over to 24th Street NE where Frisco owns a nondescript two-story building near Anacostia Park. It was a brick building that had last been painted two or three decades ago. Based on the very faded sign above the ground floor, it had once been an appliance repair store. It had an old-looking garage door on the left side, again with peeling paint, which Frisco used to store his equally nondescript 1999 Impala. The Chevy had sun-bleached blue paint covering the entire body.
We suspected, but never asked, that Frisco made some very good money doing whatever it was that he did. The blandness of his building was intentional. He didn’t want to attract any attention. Ever.
We parked just outside the sole entry door on the right side of his building. The door appeared rusty and deteriorated—although that was just cosmetic. The door was solid metal. There was no window in the door. Oliver pressed the buzzer.
Frisco could see us via a hidden camera above the doorframe and pressed the button that released the lock. We entered and faced a narrow stairway directly in front of us. The building felt like it was airtight.
In reality, it was probably one of the most secure structures in the District. Frisco had installed redundant security systems to protect what was surely a large investment in the computers and servers on the second floor.
We climbed the stairs covered with threadbare carpet, pressed another buzzer, and waited for Frisco to release the automatic door lock. Once we entered, there he stood in faded blue jeans and a black pocket T-shirt stretched taut across his chest and biceps. We shook hands—which involved bent arms, hooked thumbs, and leaning in to each other with a single pat on the other’s back. While he was a little unusual, he was actually a nice guy.
The room we had entered looked like a Best Buy on steroids. There were 60” flat-screen televisions hanging on the walls. Frisco was an avid football fan with season tickets to the Washington Commanders—previously known as the Washington Football Team—and, before that, the Washington Redskins. He never missed a home game.
There was also a wall-mounted set of twelve smaller flat screens that showed the views from his security cameras. The room was neat as a pin, whatever that phrase means, with computers and servers organized around the perimeter of the room on tables. He had obviously upgraded the electrical service in the building as there were outlets everywhere. Every piece of equipment was also protected by a surge protector and battery backup. I suspected that he also had generator backup in his garage in case of a loss of power. His kitchen and living quarters occupied the rear of this floor.
