Incentive for Death, page 12
“So, what can I do to help you?” he asked.
We explained that we had two homicides and told him the background of each. Oliver showed him the two screen grabs of the lady at the Charter Building. He then showed Frisco the multiple screen grabs of the man from the baseball park.
“We have no idea who these two people are,” Oliver said. “But right now, they’re our prime suspects. We’ve also got the actual closed-circuit footage that these screen grabs came from. Can you run some facial recognition magic for us?”
Frisco nodded. “Let’s give it a try.” He sat at one of his computers with a 19” screen and started pecking away on his keyboard. We stood over his shoulders, which we knew from prior experience he didn’t mind.
“Since we’re in D.C., the best facial recognition database is at Homeland Security.”
I asked, “You can get in there?”
He nodded as he continued to pound away on his keyboard. “Yep. They think I’m one of their own.” He paused and smiled as he looked at me. “Who knows? Maybe I am.” Another enigmatic smile.
I replied, “And I don’t need to know.”
“You are correct.” He turned back to his screen and almost immediately said, “I’m in. Now let’s feed in our pictures. Let’s start with the lady. That will be the tougher one as we only have a single profile shot and the picture through the windshield when she exited the garage.” He fed in the shots from the thumb drives from the Charter Building because they had better definition than the screen grabs.
Talking to his computer screen, Frisco said, “Okay, baby, let’s see what you can do.” Then we waited as his screen showed only the rotating circle signaling that the computer was searching.
After about sixty seconds, Frisco said, “It’s taking longer because we don’t have much in the way of images to feed it. Plus, I have to say she looks like a whole lot of women of that age, which makes the pool of people to search much larger.”
Eventually, his computer gave a single ping. “That means we have a hit,” he said. But the spinning wheel came back up on the screen.
“Uh-oh,” Frisco said. “That means it probably has a hit, but is deciding whether the identity can be released to us.”
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“It probably means the system figured out who she is, but her identity may be protected.”
“Protected?”
“Yeah, like maybe one of those dark operations, which officially do not exist.”
Then his computer beeped again. Up came a single line of text: “This information is not available.”
“That confirms it,” Frisco said. “She’s in the system, but some part of the government has decided that there is to be no record of her.”
Oliver said, “Damn. Can you run the guy from the ballpark?”
Frisco nodded and used the thumb drives to feed in the multiple pictures of the guy, both those with the ball cap on and those without. Again, the whirling circle told us that the system was searching. This time it only had to think for about fifteen seconds before we got a ping.
“He’s in the system,” Frisco said. “Better input made the search easier.” Then we got the whirling circle again. “Not good,” said Frisco. “We may have another one who is protected.”
Sure enough. We promptly got the same, “This information is not available.”
“There you go,” Frisco said as he turned and looked at both of us. “Same story. Sorry, guys, but this is the best recognition system available. Not even Interpol has anything better.”
We thanked Frisco and told him we owed him. We repeated the handshake process and headed downstairs.
After we were in the Jeep, I shook my head. “Damn. Those were our best leads.”
Oliver looked as downhearted as I felt. He shook his head once and said, “On a different subject, I’m kind of hungry. Since we’re in the neighborhood, how about swinging by Sadie’s?”
“Sure,” I agreed and drove the five blocks to Sadie’s grocery store and kitchen.
Oliver and I generally worked out at Buster’s gym around seven in the morning on days when we were on the later shift at MPD. On those days, we followed our workouts with an improvised breakfast. We went to a nearby house where a fifty-something African-American lady named Sadie ran a small neighborhood grocery store in the front room of her little house. The shelves were an odd assortment with a limited inventory.
Sadie had an opening cut into the wall between the main room / grocery store and her kitchen. She also did cooking for takeout. We would step up to the window and order our food. Oliver’s breakfast usually consisted of a dozen gizzards sprinkled with hot sauce, and I normally had her drop two hot dogs into the deep fryer at the same time. We then would sit outside on the edge of her low front porch to enjoy our gourmet breakfast.
Oliver had been a regular at Sadie’s before I moved to D.C. He had grown up nearby and attended Howard University on a ROTC scholarship, much the same as I had done at the University of Nebraska. Sadie considered him to be almost family.
When we went inside today, Sadie was standing behind the opening to her kitchen. Oliver asked, “Sadie, I know we’re a little late, but you got anything cooking?”
Sadie smiled. “I’ve got some wings that are asking to be thrown in the fryer.” We both agreed and asked for a dozen each with hot sauce sprinkled on top, and we each got a Diet Coke. Once our food was in hand, we sat on the edge of Sadie’s front porch and ate in silence as we thought.
I started to slowly roll my neck in kind of a figure eight.
“What?” Oliver asked.
I leaned over and stared at the stunted grass in Sadie’s postage stamp-sized front yard. I mumbled, “What are we missing?”
Oliver responded, “Yeah, I know. Do we have two homicides that are related or not? Do we have two doers that are related or not?”
“I sense there are threads floating around. But we can’t even snag them, much less tie them together.”
Oliver remained quiet. We headed back to the office.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
BETWEEN PROJECTS, Maggie Hampton went to the cafeteria for lunch. She got chicken salad in a wrap and a Coke.
In looking for a seat she spotted Lindsey Brown, with whom she had worked on various projects. Lindsey was thirty-something and a little pudgy. They had always gotten along well the several times they worked together. Maggie headed over to the table where Lindsey was sitting. “Saving seats or can I join you?”
Lindsey looked up from the book she was reading and smiled. “Absolutely. How are you, stranger?”
Maggie pulled out a chair and set her plate and drink on the table. “You still doing IT, or what the Chief calls cyber?”
“Oh, yeah. Nothing exciting at the moment, but the world will need us more than the alpha types carrying guns.”
Maggie bit into her wrap. “Our group worked on something that will be coming your way.”
“Good. Hope it’s something challenging.”
“May or may not be,” Maggie said. “Something about trying to penetrate medical records on companies here to see if the same tactic would work overseas.”
Lindsey raised her face up from her plate of chicken Parmesan. “Actually, we did something like that for Morehead several months ago. He had us look for holes at insurance companies and stand-alone physicians and pharmacies. Nothing too corporate or government. They probably had big IT departments and major fire walls.”
Maggie’s brow wrinkled a little. She was wondering why Morehead had them compile a similar list yesterday. He’d apparently already given some thought and focus on where to search. “Find any glaring holes that I should worry about as a consumer?”
“Nah. Some private doctors were pretty sloppy and out of date. The small pharmacies had pretty good systems, probably packages they bought off the shelf from a software company. Life insurance companies were leakier than you would expect. Small viatical insurance companies were fairly easy to penetrate.”
Although knowing the answer, Maggie asked, “And what are those?”
“You’re not a prospect. They’re companies that buy up life insurance policies from retired people.”
“Huh. The only life insurance I have is the same policy we all get as part of our benefits package.”
“I guess they only buy from older people. Or folks who have large premiums they can no longer afford.”
Maggie swallowed another bite of chicken salad. “What kind of info were you guys able to access?”
“Just about everything. People they bought policies from. The health records on those owners. Even got the list of people who owned the investment fund, if it was structured that way.”
“Their records must not be very secure. Is that something we could use in other countries to dig out info?”
Lindsey shrugged once. “Guess it depends on whether there is such a business wherever you’re looking. My gut feel is that probably only Western countries would have life insurance. Maybe not even all of them. I never heard any more about it. You know the Chief. You seldom hear back on whether any of your work is used.”
The topic then changed to the latest in Lindsey’s dating life. She was dating a nice guy who worked at Housing and Urban Development.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ON THE WAY BACK, I called Beverly Gray to see if Chief Whittaker was available. “He just got back from a meeting upstairs. His calendar is open for the next half hour.”
“We’re en route. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
We went straight to his office on the fifth floor. Without a word, Beverly waved us toward his door. I knocked once and was beckoned to enter with his usual “Come.” We entered. The Chief was wearing a tan two-piece suit with a blue button-down shirt and yellow tie. Rather sporty for him.
I said, “Got an update for you, Chief. We’re making progress.” He gestured us to the seats in front of his desk.
Chief Whittaker said, “I’ve only got fifteen minutes, but I’m getting questions upstairs about the Van Damm case.”
I started off. “First, Rae Davis and Jerry Faircloth helped us out a lot.”
The Chief replied, “Good, glad to hear it. I’ve always thought Rae Davis is a good detective.” Noticeably absent was a similar accolade for Jerry Faircloth. The Chief was no fool.
“They interviewed the security guard at Nationals Park and, because the M.E. gave us a precise time of death at eight o’clock Monday evening, they were able to get pictures of the likely doer immediately after Eugene Rollins dropped dead.” Oliver handed the Chief the photos.
“Any luck identifying him?” the Chief asked.
“That’s the interesting part of our report. We got the photos run through Homeland Security’s facial recognition program.”
“How’d you do that so quickly?” Chief Whittaker asked with a true look of puzzlement on his face.
“You really don’t want to know,” I replied. His eyes narrowed for a second. Then he said, “This is why I love you guys. You get the job done. Go ahead,” he said, turning his hand to me. Made me wonder if I had adopted that gesture from him.
“Well, the good news is that the facial recognition software got a hit on this guy. The bad news is that the system refused to give us any information on him.”
“What does that mean?” Chief Whittaker was clearly frustrated.
“It was explained to us that this probably means that this guy is part of some black ops part of the government and that his identity has been concealed on purpose.”
“Holy shit,” Whittaker exclaimed. “We now have a dead engineer at a baseball game and it’s part of a Jason Bourne conspiracy?”
Oliver joined in. “That was our reaction as well. And especially frustrating because we have clear pictures of the person who likely killed Eugene Rollins.”
The Chief then asked, “Is there anything that connects the Rollins case with Van Damm?”
I said, “Not at first glance, but there are two things percolating in my mind that might tie them together. First, Rollins had recently sold his life insurance policy because of some financial setbacks due to his wife losing her job. Rae Davis is following up to see who he sold it to. No answer yet.
“Van Damm also sold his $2 million life policy to reinvest the money elsewhere. I don’t know if there is a thread there or not, but we’re looking at it. His ex-wife told us he reinvested the $700,000 he got from the sale of his life insurance in Portland Life Solutions. Van Damm had a large stake in Portland, which is a viatical company that buys life insurance policies.
“We had Simone Reese in Brady Pollard’s shop look at Van Damm’s financial status.” Chief Whittaker got a small smile on his face that told me he had probably also met the lovely Ms. Reese. “She said Van Damm’s total investment in Portland was worth around $8.7 million.”
Whittaker’s eyebrows went up.
“Yes, sir.”
Now the Chief’s entire forehead inched up. “Holy cow.”
“Yeah. But we’re still working on those threads.”
The Chief focused on me. “You said there were two things that might tie them together. What’s the second?”
I smiled as I played my hold card. “We also ran the lady from the Charter Building through the facial recognition system. Again, we got a hit. And, again, we were denied any identifying information. We were told this likely means that the mystery lady probably also had her identity concealed by the government, perhaps because she is also part of some black operation.”
Whittaker frowned. “How do we find out if these two are from the same operation?”
“We don’t know, sir. But we’re working on it.”
Whittaker shook his head left and right in slow motion. “I can’t believe we have photos of the people who likely committed these two murders but no way to identify them. You two have made major progress here, but we’re a long way from the finish line.”
I said, “Yes, sir. But we’re making steady progress.”
The Chief said, “I can see that. I’m glad you two guys are on this.” With that he waved us toward the door, and we left.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ON THE WAY BACK to our desks, Rae Davis flagged us down. “I talked to Mrs. Rollins again. She said they sold her husband’s life insurance policy to Portland Life Solutions. Does that help?”
“It might,” I said. “That name keeps cropping up. Thanks, Rae.”
As we were hanging our suit coats over our chairs, Oliver said to me, “So, you told the Chief that there are two possible ways to connect the Rollins and Van Damm cases. The sale of life insurance policies and whether there was a connection between our unidentified suspects. When did that occur to you?”
“An epiphany on the spot. I was trying to identify similar threads in both cases, and that was the only thing I could come up with.”
Oliver said, “I wonder what Pamela Chenire has come up with on Van Damm’s phones.”
“Call her and see. We can go down to their shop right now, if she’s available.”
When Oliver called, Pamela said she was in her cubicle and that she had a fairly comprehensive list of all of Van Damm’s calls. Oliver asked her to print two copies for us and said we’d come down to see her.
We didn’t put our coats back on for this internal excursion and took the stairs down to the third floor. Pamela actually seemed glad to see us. I suspected she didn’t get many visitors.
“So,” I asked, “did you get what you needed to talk to his service providers?”
“I did. I had three different providers to work with. First, on his desk phone, they had direct inward dialing so people could call him without going through the firm’s switchboard or receptionist. Brady had talked to the law firm’s IT person, and he printed out a list of the phone numbers Van Damm called or who called him over the past thirty days. The IT person also said the firm’s phone service provider was AT&T.
“The list from the firm’s IT person only had phone numbers in and out. No information who was on the other end of those calls. I contacted my source at AT&T’s office here in the District. He has helped me in the past without requiring a formal subpoena. In return I sometimes do favors for him.
“The first thing I did was go over the outgoing calls from Mr. Van Damm’s desk phone. I worked backwards starting with midnight on Monday. Here’s a list of all of Van Damm’s outgoing calls from that phone in reverse chronological order.
“As you can see, there are no outgoing calls after 8:47 p.m. on Monday evening. The last number he called is for an internal number at a company called Portland Life Solutions. It was not their main line. Without that company’s internal directory, I couldn’t identify the actual recipient of that call. Since it was close to the time of death, I decided to take a chance. So, I called that number. It was answered by a man who identified himself as Parker Winston. I said that I had the wrong number, apologized, and hung up.
“Then I looked at Portland’s website and determined that Parker Winston is the CEO of that company, as well as one of the original founders. Before I got out of the website, I noticed that Weldon Van Damm was also listed as a founder. Small world, huh?”
I smiled. “Great work, Pamela. We’ll make a detective out of you yet.”
She absolutely beamed.
I told her, “That company keeps coming up in our conversations with people. I would dearly like to know what was said during that conversation. Can you get that for us too?”
“Hardly. Wish I could.”
Then I pointed at her list. “Per the information you’ve assembled, it appears that call lasted from 8:47 to 8:55. Am I reading that correctly?” She nodded. I said, “So, an eight-minute call shortly before he was killed.”
