MEXICAN BROTHERS
The headline read, MEXICAN NATIONALS WITH DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY RUNS OVER AND FATALY INJURES A 12 YEAR OLD BOY. The story went on to say that two Mexicans, brothers, were drunk, had stolen a car and hit the boy as he crossed the street near his home. Police responding to the report found the car abandoned nearby. The brothers were apprehended attempting to steal another car just a block away from the abandoned car.
The brothers have been arrested and released 3 times in the last 18 months. Cole asked a reporter who had done a story on the fatally injured boy about the story. He told Cole that there was a Mexican government office in Salt Lake City. These brothers worked in the office and were protected by Diplomatic Immunity! The reporter’s cell alarm went off, he said,
“Oops, I’ve got an appointment, help yourself, my notes on these animals are in my desk, bottom left side, the file is marked with a skull and crossbones.”
Cole went into the reporters’ office and pulled out the skull and crossbones file. The notes on the Mexican brothers were on top. Cole paged down through the rest of the file. The reporter was keeping a file on crimes where he knew the suspect was guilty of murder, but had been released because of mistakes made by the police department or the prosecuting attorney. Other times the murderer was released because his attorney had found some loophole where the system released his client. Some of them were released or given a short sentence because the victim was never found or the evidence wasn’t strong enough to convince the jury to convict. Cole went to the copy machine and copied the entire file.
In the notes on the Mexican brothers, Cole saw the name of a bar where these guys went to get drunk. There was another address, probably where they lived. He also had a picture, mug shots, of these legally protected swine. He figured that the bar would be a Mexican bar where he and Aaron wouldn’t be welcome, and would in all probability be asked to leave. “No, the direct approach would probably get them beaten, stabbed and maybe killed.”
“Let’s go see if that address is a house and where it’s located.”
The address was located in a middle class neighborhood. This is the kind of place where both the husband and wife usually work in low paying jobs in order to make enough money to live there. People like these Mexicans move into the neighborhood and most of the neighbors never even see them. They become almost invisible.
Cole and Aaron drove around the neighborhood. There was no one on the streets during the day. There would probably be some activity going on in the evening after work. People would be out taking care of their lawns, having dinner and watching TV.
This was during their lunch hour, so they turned around and came back by the house. Just as they were passing the house, the front door opened and a cigarette was thrown out the half opened door. “We need to come back at another time. It’s time to get to work and we don’t know how many people are in the house.”
“You’re right,” said Cole, “we could go up to the door, knock on the door and be facing 10 armed Mexicans with nothing to say or do. Aaron, since you live closer to this location than I do, how about driving by here on the way to work, then come back by here on your way home for a few days to see if you can see any kind of pattern.”
“Consider it done. If I happen to notice something that needs our immediate attention, I’ll call you.”
After a week of driving by the house that they suspected held the Mexican brothers, Aaron drove by just as a black Chrysler 300 with the windows so dark that a person couldn’t see through, pulled into the driveway. 2 Hispanic men got out of the car, walked up to the house, hesitated just long enough to unlock the door, and went inside.
“Cole, I just saw them come home and go inside. I pulled over at the end of the street where I can watch the front of the house in my mirrors.”
“I don’t think that it would be a good idea to go crashing in there without knowing how many knives and guns they have close enough for easy access. Let’s keep doing this for a couple more days. If they come home at the same time every day, maybe we can break into their house and be waiting for them when they come home,” said Cole
Aaron drove down the street at exactly the same time each day. Each day the Mexican brothers would show up at approximately the same time. No other people were with them when they returned home each day.
Cole listened to Aaron as he told him what times they got home each night. “Next Monday I will leave work a little early. Just early enough to give us a half hour or so to get in the house and prepare a welcoming reception for them. I would expect them to be armed with a knife for sure and possibly a pistol as well. So, we need to surprise them. Aaron, what do you think?”
“Sounds like a plan. Assuming all goes as planned, what do we do as they come in the house?”
“I figure that we should have something heavy enough to knock them down without any struggle. I don’t want them to have time to pull out a knife or pistol. If our pistols had silencers I would feel much better prepared.”
“I liked the hit you put on that big guy. Right to the neck and it was all over.”
“That would work except for a couple of things. I would rather not use the crushed larynx again for awhile and with 2 of them and 2 of us, it would be too easy for something to go wrong. If we both had a short piece of pipe or a tire iron, we could probably take them both out before either of them knows what’s happening. I just happen to have a tire iron that is already broken in.”
Aaron didn’t have a tire iron that would work, but he had a heavy wrecking bar that weighed a couple of pounds. One end was shaped like the prying part of a hammer with two sharp “teeth” with a gap between that could be used to pull out nails; the other end was sharp like a chisel. Either end would do a lot of damage with the weight and the sharp edges.
“I like it. We go next Monday night. We can discuss the plan and go over it step by step next Monday at noon,” said Aaron. “I’ll keep driving by here every day to see if there is a change in the time they come home.”
Next Monday they went over the plan and decided to leave one of the vehicles at a grocery store parking lot 7 blocks away from the Mexican brothers’ home. In the other vehicle, they would ride to the house and park around the corner, then walk to the house. They would get in by going in a back door or window. If they couldn’t quickly force the door open, they would break a window, preferable in a back door, then reach in and open the door.
They parked the car around the corner from the house and put on their gloves. They walked back down the street covering the metal weapons inside their jackets. It was deserted without a person in sight. There were no cars on the street or in any driveway. Cole walked up to the door, and tried to open it, IT WAS UNLOCKED. “PSSSS Aaron, its unlocked, come here quick!”
Aaron jumped up beside Cole in about 3 steps. “Let’s go in, fast.”
They opened the door and went inside expecting to meet a dozen, armed Mexicans. Instead there was a man lying under a blanket on the couch.
“Jose, did you bring me some medicine” said the man who was facing the wall in heavily accented English.”
Before he could turn toward them, Aaron stepped over and planted the wrecking bar teeth in the crown of his head. There was no more movement from the blanket. Aaron pulled the bloody metal bar up and wiped it off on the blanket. “I didn’t know how hard to hit him so I hit him pretty hard.”
“It’s better to hit him too hard than not hard enough. It looks like he won’t be getting up under his own power ever again.”
Cole closed the door and stood watching the street through a small window in the door. “Jose should be here soon.” A few minutes later, a sleek, new pickup with dealer plates pulled up.
“My turn, I’ll stand right behind the door, as he closes it, I’ll step out and club him. You can stand just out of his sight in the bedroom hallway. You’ll know if you need to come help me,” whispered Cole.
A Hispanic man opened the door, stepped in and turned to close the door. As he turned, Cole brought the tire iron down and across his head. He dropped like a stone. Blood was gushing out the wound on the side of his head. “Before we leave, let’s check out the house.”
It was almost like Déjà Vu, on the kitchen table was a pile of plastic sacks with white powder in them, a kitchen aluminum bowl was almost full of smaller plastic sacks with little brown rocks in them, and a duffle bag on the chair was full of money.
“Quick, go through the house, is there another duffle bag?” Cole said as he ran into the nearest bedroom. He saw 2 empty duffle bags and ran back into the front room. Aaron came running in with another full duffle bag. “This one is full of money, mostly $20’s.
“Let’s take the $50s and the $100s in one bag, and put some of the smaller bills in the other duffle bag for a fire. Then we can rig up some kind of explosion to start a fire and we’ll probably be in the clear. Does this house have gas heat?”
“Yes it does.”
“Find me a hammer if you can, I think I saw a tool chest in the closet. I’ll put a bunch of paper on the burner on the electric stove. When it gets hot enough to start the paper burning, there should be gas everywhere, if we can knock the connection off somewhere.”
Aaron took off to see if he could find a hammer, Cole went to Jose, lifted his jacket and pulled out a 9 MM Glock pistol from a shoulder holster. The holster also had a neat round elastic holder that held a 3 inch round piece of what looked like a pipe. “I think this is a silencer,” said Cole. He went over to the blanket; the guy there had a 9 MM Glock in his hand and a shoulder holster with a duplicate silencer. Cole took both guns and holsters and put them in the duffle bag.
Aaron came back with a sheepish grin, I didn’t find a hammer, but my bloody wrecking bar should do the trick, he opened the water heater closet, hit the gas hose connection until it started to leak and came after Cole. “Time to go.”
Cole laid the newspaper down on the hot plate and flipped the electric burner control on high. “OK after you, out the back door and down the alley to your car.”
They walked down the alley. When they reached the car, they threw the duffle bags in the back seat and drove back to the parking lot to get Cole’s car. There was no sign of a police siren or a fire truck, yet.
“Do you realize this is the first time I have directly killed a rabid dog,” asked Aaron?
“How do you feel?”
“I feel like superman!” Aaron handed Cole the duffle bag. “See you at noon tomorrow.”
At noon the next day, Aaron asked, “how much this time?”
“$125,000, I put it in the storage unit with the rest of money. I also put in a bunch of clothes and boxes of stuff that I have been accumulating in the garage. I put the duffle bags in a trash sack. It’s the first of the month, here’s another $1,000. This is a lot of money to have in that storage unit.”
“Did you see on the news last night? There was a fire. The fire was caused by a gas leak and an overheated kitchen stove. They found 2 bodies that were so badly burned that they couldn’t tell if they died from the fire or some other cause. The police found evidence of drugs in the ashes. With the drug residue and also an undetermined amount of money burned in a bag, it points to the house being a major drug distribution point. The house had been rented by the Mexican government and was occupied by their employees. They had no comment on the fire and deaths. The two have been identified as the same Mexican brothers who ran over and killed the young boy several weeks ago,” said Aaron.
“Amazing, I guess crime doesn’t pay after all. I’ve been thinking about the storage unit. If we go and rent a big unit somewhere else, there is a bigger chance for a suspicious manager to go to the mob. I checked in the complex where my unit is and he has an available unit big enough to drive the motor home inside and it has an electrical plug-in. I told him that I needed to have somewhere to park a truck out of the elements so I rented it for a year. It will take me a couple of days, with your help, to fix it up so that it’s reasonably secure.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I want all this money protected by electronic alarms with instant notice to us if a break-in is attempted and an electric fence attached to the door lock to keep out any curious people who come along looking for anything of value.”
“Ok, that sounds good, but what are you talking about?”
“First we have to go to LOWES’s to get some supplies. We will need a roll of barbed wire, 40 eight foot studs, skill saw, screws, electric screw driver, electric drill and bits, the biggest padlock they have, pliers, heavy duty wire cutter, black tape, a roll of coated 20 gauge wire, heavy duty twist–on connectors, and some heavy duty gloves. If they carry diesel powered electric generators we can get one there, if not we’ll have to make another stop. We will also need to stop at an alarm company to get some specialized alarm equipment and a farm equipment store for the most powerful electric fence controller that they have. There is no doubt that we will need additional supplies, but this should get us started.”
Cole attached the studs to the existing wall and ceiling supports and from them put a grid of studs 24 inches apart. To the studs he attached the barbed wire every 12 inches. The ceiling and 3 walls all were covered with the barbed wire. He was careful to avoid the screws in the studs to avoid grounding the electric fence.
“I spent some time at my uncles’ farm where he used an electric fence to keep his livestock inside his fences. A cow will put its nose up to the fence and somehow smell or feel the electricity and stay away from it. Without the electricity, the cows will just walk through the fence. He always used barbed wire so that if the cow touched the fence, the barb would make a better connection for the electricity to hammer the animal. I saw a big, 2,500 pounds, Holstein bull that didn’t like the rocks we were throwing at him; decide to come through an electric fence after my brother and me. He had a chain in his nose and when the chain hit the fence it knocked him down on his knees and he forgot about us.”
“The current comes on and off every few seconds. If it didn’t, it would kill anybody and anything that touched it. Anyway, we will connect the electric fence controller to the barbed wire and also connect it to the door latch. The door is steel and touches the ground; so if the wire touches it, the electricity in the fence is grounded and is useless. I’ve fixed the locking assembly to the door so that it’s insulated from the door. I used plastic pieces and layers of electrical insulation material. The diesel electricity generator is hooked to the system. If the power goes off, the generator will start up immediately and keep the fence going. There’s enough diesel fuel to run the generator for 48 hours. The alarm system is connected to the generator as well and will call both you and I, if the door is raised, the electric fence is shorted out, or if the power switches to the generator.
If a person walks by and touches the padlock, he will get a jolt that could knock him or her down. That won’t faze the controller. If a person were to put a wire around the padlock and stick it into the ground or a bucket of water or something to ground it, it would call us with “INTRUDER ALERT.” We turn off the electric fence with this little remote control, just like your TV set. The controller also keeps track of any shorts. It will tell us exactly each time something touches the wire, or the door handle and the duration. If the manager or someone comes by and just touches it and goes away, we will read it as a hit. If the hit is longer than 5 seconds, it calls us.”
“We have to test it. Do you want to touch it?
“Are you out of your mind? Hell no, after you told me just how powerful a fence like this is, you ask me if I want to touch it?”
“I just thought I would ask. I touched my uncle’s fence once on purpose and once by accident. Both times, it knocked me down as it sent a jolt of electricity through me. No serious damage. I thought that you might want to know how it feels. We’re done, the fence is on, the door is shut and the padlock is on the door. I have on tennis shoes so it might protect me from the full power of the fence.” With that comment, Cole reached out and grabbed the padlock.
The electricity does strange things to the body. All of the nerves and muscles in the body are controlled by small charges of electricity. When you subject the body to a massive charge of electricity, strange things happen. In this case, Cole went flying through the air and crashed into the back of the tank. He lay there on the ground as Aaron laughed hysterically. After a minute or so, Aaron was beginning to get worried when Cole groaned and sat up. “Wow, just like I remembered. This is more powerful, but the electricity that goes through my body is something I will never forget. Are you sure you don’t want to try it?”
“I’m glad that all of our work produced a working alarm system, but no, there’s no way I’m going to test it.”
“I told the manager that I was going to build some shelving and put in an alarm since the unit had an electric plug-in. I am going to warn him not to touch the lock on the door.”
“One final item to add and we’re done. Did you see any safes at LOWE’S?”
“I didn’t see any safes there but I have seen them at Sportsman’s Warehouse.” If some bad guys get through the storage facility security, and our first line of defense, I want them to face the biggest, heaviest safe that Sportsman’s carries. “I don’t want the manager to know that we have a safe in here,” so they laid it on its back under a tarp of the truck. There was enough room in the storage unit to bolt the safe to the back wall and still be able to pull the truck in with 20 feet to spare.
With the safe in place and bolted to the back wall and the cement floor, Cole and Aaron transferred the money briefcases and duffle bags to the safe. It filled up the safe. “We’re going to need another safe, so we might as well get two more!” They went back and bought 2 more safes and bolted them down. “One last test, the fence is off, but the alarm system is active; Aaron, raise the door.” He raised the door and both cell phones rang and displayed “INTRUDER ALERT.” “Hot damn, it works,” said Aaron.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Chapter Seven
RACHEL’S REUNION
“It has been almost 6 months since I promised you that I wouldn’t get into the drug money,” Cole said to Aaron as he handed him $1,000 cash. “I’ve been taking cash out of my account each payday so that it won’t be anything unusually for me to have lots of cash. Jan is still working, so we have a surplus even though I’ve set up a million dollar life insurance policy on me for Jan and a trust fund for Billy with the money from the sale of Jan’s’ house. I also have been putting some cash in our Family Corporation. This is the first time I’ve got into the drug money. I also took $1,000 for me.”
“I don’t know what I am going to do with it,” said Aaron.
“If you don’t want to handle it yet, give it back and I’ll put it back in the duffle bag.”
“Yeah, do that, I haven’t been thinking about the pile of money in your storage unit, I’ve been so busy at the office plus with Rachel getting pregnant we’ve been looking at baby stuff. Yeah put it back for now. It will ease my mind that the money is there if I need it. Are you going to the TAE KWON DO competition this weekend?”
“Yes, I wanted to actually see how I stack up against someone new. You’re getting really good, but I usually know what you’re going to do before you do it. How about you, are you going?”
“No, we have made other plans. Rachel has a big family reunion this weekend.”
At lunch the following Monday, Aaron asked, “how did it go, did you whip anybody?
“I did alright, won some and lost some. It was fun. Some of those experts are really scary. I would like to get that good, but as you know, it takes a lot of time to study and practice. I feel that I’m good enough to take anyone who hasn’t had a lot of martial arts training.”
“You’re a lot better than I am, even though you’re bigger than I am. I always thought that the bigger you were the slower you are, but you’re bigger and faster than I am,” said Aaron. I wanted to tell you about my reunion. One of Rachel’s cousins, or 2nd cousins or something, her name is Jamie, is going with this creep. She’s a true damsel in distress. Jamie is absolutely gorgeous even with the bruises all over her arms, legs, neck and face. She tried to cover up the bruises on her face with makeup but they showed through. She explained that she is totally uncoordinated and is always falling down or running into things. Her boyfriend wasn’t there. “He had to work”, she said. From the way she talked about this guy, she is terrified of him. Rachel told me that Jamie is a Registered Nurse at the University Hospital. She makes good money and has bought a house. She met this jerk and before she knew what had happened he had moved into her house and she was afraid to even suggest that he move out.”
“He’s a coach at the University. I guess he was away from town with some team back east. Rachel said that she has met him and he’s a total jerk. He’s always working out and she thinks that he takes steroids. He’s huge with muscles bulging out of his skin tight shirts. He entered the Mr. America competition but they threw him out after a drug test. He has been married before. Jamie found out that his ex-wife was so badly beaten one time she almost died. The county prosecutor wanted to put him in jail, but his wife wouldn’t cooperate with them, so they dropped the case. The guy slipped and told Jamie about his ex-wife. After that, he started threatening her and telling her that he would do the same thing to her if she ever tried to leave him. He’s been hinting that he thinks it’s time to get married and have some kids, but so far he hasn’t asked her to marry him. Jamie doesn’t know what to do. She absolutely will not marry him or have his child under any condition. She’s afraid of what he’ll do if she tells him to get out. She feels like she’s his sex slave.”
“Rachel told me Jamie wouldn’t answer her questions about where the bruises came from. Jamie knows that Rachel knows she isn’t uncoordinated. She knows that those bruises come from being beat up by her muscle bound boyfriend.”
“All in all he sounds like a complete human slime bucket. He’s one of those good old boys. Through his work at the University he is buddy buddy with many of the deep pocket University boosters. I guess he knows everybody and they all think that he’s this really neat guy,” said Aaron.
“Do you think we should go see him? He sounds like he’s muscle bound. I fought a guy that was a lot like that last weekend. He was strong as an ox and so slow that it was easy. Remember when we first started practicing and the instructor would go through the motions in slow motion so that we could see what he was talking about? It was almost like that.”
“Maybe you have just progressed to the point where it just seems that way?”
“I would like to think so; it could be a combination of both.
Anyway, up till I fought that guy I was intimidated by someone with muscles on top of muscles. Now I’m looking forward to meeting this slime bucket.”
“He’s at the University athletic facility every weekday until closing. He locks up when everybody is done for the day. Rachel said that Jamie told her the jerk is always trying to pick up the young co-eds. A few of them think that if they sleep with one of the coaches, it will give them an advantage. If he scores, he goes over to Jamie’s place later and will be nice and mellow. If he doesn’t score, he goes to Jamie’s place and will be in a mean, foul mood and take it out on her.”
“The more that I learn about this guy, the more I dislike him. Where does she live?”
“Rachel said that Jamie has her own house up on the bench, north of the University. It’s in the old part of town, an old house that has been remodeled, and lots of huge trees.” He handed Cole a slip of paper with the address written on it.
“What if you and Rachel invited Jamie over for dinner tonight? Tell her to leave a note for her muscle bound friend to come over when he gets home? At the last minute call Rachel and tell her that I had a flat tire and you’re helping me take care of it. You’ll be home as soon as you can. Then you go down to the University and watch for the jerk to leave the athletic facility, when he leaves call me and then go home. I should have enough time to park somewhere close and jog over to Jamie’s house. That area has people jogging up and down every street. No one will notice another jogger. If I’m early I’ll go around and around the block until he comes home. When he goes in the house I’ll follow him in, and practice one of the killing blows. Then I’ll go through the house and make it look like I was robbing the house and was surprised by the jerk. After I put him to sleep, I’ll jog back to the car, call your cell phone and let it ring once when I’m done.”
The muscle-bound jerk/coach circulated through the athletic facility hoping to talk one of the young female athletes into going out for a pizza. No luck, his reputation had pretty well ran its course with this year’s freshmen crop of any girls who might respond to a proposition from a University coach.
‘I can hardly wait until the new semester starts. Damn, well I’ll go see Jamie and have mad passionate sex with her. I’m getting tired of her attitude. I really shouldn’t hit her, but when she gives me the look like she despises me, I lose my temper. I don’t mean to hit her that hard either, but what the hell, it’s good for her, the little wench! She’s lucky that I moved in to protect her.’ With that he checked the entire facility, locked up and went out to get in his car.
‘There is nothing to do now but go to Jamie’s. Wonder what she’s fixed for supper. I really enjoy having a sex slave who can cook!’ He pulled up to the house but didn’t see her car. ‘Where in the hell is she, she had better not have ran off somewhere. I’ll find her and if she’s with somebody else, they both will spend a long time in the hospital!’ He went into the house and was reading Jamie’s note on the bulletin board when the door opened and a man in a hooded sweat shirt came in. He looked like a trained athlete by the way he moved. He thought it might be one of the assistant coaches, a defensive end or one of the line backers, until the guy reached up and flipped his hood back. It was a face the muscle bound coach didn’t recognize, “Who in the hell are you?”
COLE
Cole sat in the car in a grocery store parking lot. The University has a parking lot closer, but it was patrolled by campus security to insure that the cars parked there had the proper permit and he didn’t have a permit. ‘This is close enough.’
His cell phone chimed, “he’s getting in his car now, and it’s a red Jeep.”
“Thanks for the help with the flat tire, see you tomorrow, tell Rachel hi for us.”
Cole put on his gloves, got out of his truck, locked it, flipped the sweatshirt hood over his head and started up the street toward Jamie’s house. The timing was perfect. He was about 3 houses away from Jamie’s place when a red jeep pulled up. Cole slowed down hoping the jerk wouldn’t notice him. A big guy got out of the Jeep and walked to the house, unlocked the front door, and went inside. He didn’t seem to notice Cole. The door closed, Cole jogged up and opened the door. He stepped in and flipped the hood off his head. The jerk said, “Who in the hell are you?”
The door swung closed as Cole flipped the hood back off his head and stepped toward the jerk. The jerk stood there glaring as if his muscles and girth would be enough to intimidate anyone. He placed his hands on his hips with a threatening look and was waiting for Cole to say something. Cole hit him in his neck below his chin just as hard as he could. The jerk dropped like someone had dropped a ton of rocks on his head.
‘This is supposed to look like a robbery gone bad, since he’s a goner anyway, a knife in the throat will probably cover the crushed neck.’ Cole went into the kitchen, looked around and spotted a knife set sitting in a wooden block on the counter. He took out the biggest one, ‘this one should do’, and went back in where the jerk was grabbing at his throat and gasping.
“You don’t look like you’re doing very well. Hey man, does your throat hurt, hmm, I’m afraid that this might hurt a little, but only for a little while.” The jerk’s face was pale and his eyes were closed. Cole reached down and thrust the knife into the jerk’s throat beneath his hand, being careful not to cut his hand. It looked like he had hit an artery and blood started squirting out through the jerk’s fingers. Cole ran upstairs and into the bedroom, he pulled out drawers and threw the contents around the room. There was a picture on a pretty girl and the jerk on top of a dresser. It must have been Jamie.
‘Wow, she’s gorgeous. She’s much too beautiful for that jerk’. He then went downstairs and made a mess of the kitchen, bathroom, and front room.
‘OK, I’m out of here.’ He stepped around the pool of blood. The jerk had quit moving. Cole was careful to not step into the blood. The floors were covered by a carpet, so not much chance of leaving a footprint behind. Cole stepped to the door and opened the door slowly. There was nobody in sight, so he stepped out and jogged down to the street and back to the car. When he got to the car, he pulled out his cell phone and called Aaron letting it ring once before hanging up.
Aaron didn’t want Jamie to go home by herself. He had only met her a few days before, but didn’t think that she would cope well with going into her house and seeing her former nemesis dead on the floor. At least he assumed he would be dead on the floor. He also wanted to delay her a little longer because he didn’t know how long Cole would need. When he got home he went in and joined Rachel and Jamie. By that time dinner was ready, “have you heard from your friend yet?”
“I wish you wouldn’t refer to him as my friend!”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“No problem, you would naturally assume, if a guy was living with me, he must be a friend! No, I haven’t heard from him yet. If something developed in the athletic complex he would be at least another hour, maybe 2 before he gets home. If he hasn’t called by the time we’re done eating, then I’ll get worried.”
Aaron tried to be his most entertaining self. He had both girls laughing and kidding around so much that the dinner took twice as long as it should have. In the middle of dinner, his cell phone rang once. He looked at the phone and with a puzzled look on his face, “must have been a wrong number.”
“Still no word from your muscle-bound…jerk”, Aaron asked as Rachel was serving desert?
Jamie giggled, “I like that description better…muscle-bound jerk.” She dropped the smile, “He should have called by now. He’ll be really mad. His temper is so bad that he just explodes when I’m not where he expects me to be. I’m afraid to go home!”
“Don’t worry,” reassured Aaron, “we’ll go home with you and make sure that he calms down before we leave.”
“You would do that?”
Rachel said, “of course, you’re my favorite cousin.”
Aaron said, “You’re my favorite wife’s favorite cousin.”
Jamie laughed and her mood brightened. She pulled up to her house with Aaron and Rachel right behind her. Jamie got out and waited for Aaron and Rachel.
“His car is here, and the light is on in the house, I’m scared.”
“Let’s go in and face him,” Aaron said.
“Ok, I’m ready.”
Jamie opened the door with Aaron and Rachel right behind her, she screamed, turned and grabbed at Aaron sobbing. Aaron looked around Jamie and saw a big body on the floor lying in a pool of blood. “Rachel, please call 911.”
Since the house was in town, the police officers were there in a matter of minutes. They went through the routine questions that the police always ask. “Do you know the victim?” “Where were you?” “When did you last see and talk to the victim?” “Did he have any enemies?” “Is anything missing?”
Jamie was in no condition to answer questions. Aaron finally convinced the officer in charge to let him take her home with them.
The investigating officer took Aaron’s address and told them that a detective would come see them tomorrow.
When they reached their house, Jamie had recovered enough to talk to them. “I can’t believe it. I talked to him today and now he’s dead. I know it’s horrible to say and to even think, but I can’t say that I’m sorry he’s dead. He was such a horrible, 2-faced bully. He was a muscle-bound jerk with no concern with anybody except himself. What do I tell the police?”
I don’t think that I would tell them that you’re glad he’s dead, but I think that you should be honest about what kind of person he was and how he beat you and raped you whenever he felt like it. The police will be able to examine your bruises, and check their records about his ex-wife and the beatings. In fact, when they ask about his enemies, you might mention his ex-wife. Be sure to mention that he propositioned the female college athletes every night and if he was unsuccessful, he would take it out on you,” said Aaron.
The next day police detective Rizzo came to Aaron & Rachel’s home to talk to Jamie. Rizzo wrote everyone’s name down. He visibly hesitated and looked at Aaron when he heard the name Aaron Johnson, then he went through the standard questions again. Jamie was in control and spelled it out for Rizzo. The detective didn’t seem surprised about anything that Jamie said. When he finished, he told Jamie that he would be in touch and gave her his card. Rizzo paused, looked Aaron in the eye and revealed some of his inner thoughts with a half smile and acted like he was about to say something, he turned to Jamie, “If you think of anything else, just call me.”
After Rizzo left, “Do you know that detective,” asked Rachel?
“Never saw him before in my life, but he acted like he knows me. I wonder what that was all about.”
Rizzo got the name of the ex-wife from the police reports and called her. After Rizzo told her about the death of her ex-husband she said, “My prayers have been answered! My ex-husband was a dangerous, cowardly, muscle-bound bully. I know that he was on track to kill somebody. I’m so thankful that he died before he killed me or somebody else.”
“Why did you drop the charges when he put you in the hospital?”
“I got pressure, from all kinds of people who didn’t really know him, to back off and drop the charges. These people couldn’t or wouldn’t’ believe that this guy could hurt a fly. Some of these people were wealthy boosters of the University and didn’t want any bad publicity. It became clear to me that he would never be convicted and when the trial was over, he might get a slap on the wrist and then he would find me and probably kill me. One of the boosters promised me a good job if I dropped the charges. That’s where I work now. I’m very happy that it worked out like it did. Now I can rest easy.”
“Where were you last night?”
“I was with my husband. We were married as soon as the divorce was final. We ate at Chang’s Chinese Palace about 7 PM, then came home and went to bed. I’m sure that you can verify with the people at Chang’s that we were there from 6:30 PM to about 8 PM. What time of day did the murder happen?”
“The body was discovered about 9:30 PM. The time of death was estimated to be about 7 PM. Thanks for your help. If you have any questions, or if something comes up, please call me at the downtown police department.”
There was a newspaper story the next day. “A popular coach at the University of Utah was killed in what appears to be an attempted robbery. Glen Chapman was found dead, by his roommate and friends, in his home just before midnight last night. Police theorize that Mr. Chapman entered his home in the University area and surprised a burglar or burglars. He was stabbed with a knife from the kitchen. If you have any information about this incident please call the police.”
Rizzo read the report from the medical examiner. The autopsy results:
CAUSE OF DEATH-Victim bled to death. Knife wound in throat. The knife was still in throat at the beginning of the autopsy. It appeared that the larynx was crushed. The force of the knife could have caused some similar damage but it’s unlikely the injuries would have been this extensive.
NOTES Steroids and male enhancement drugs were found in the blood sample.
The Crime Scene Investigators found nothing of interest to give any clues about the murderer.
Rizzo, as was his custom, sat in his locked office and talked to himself. He went over the case, ‘It’s been kind of quiet for the last year for you 2, Robin Hood. I wondered if you had retired or what. I’ve seen the police reports about this guy. You took another human slime parasite from the city. There is no evidence to point toward you guys,’ recited Rizzo to his window and the mountains beyond. ‘I wondered just how much Cole has learned in his marital arts class. The crushed larynx is not seen every day. It’s almost time!’ He stamped CASE PENDING on the official file. The case would be transferred to the UNSOLVED CASES-DEAD FILE if nothing more was found. He had no official evidence or clues toward finding the killer.
His interview with Jamie revealed more about just exactly what kind of human slimy predator this guy was. The people with an obvious motive to kill this guy (his ex-wife and his live-in girlfriend) both had iron clad alibis. Then he took the newspaper clipping about the murder and placed it in the unmarked file in the back of his file drawer.
“What happened in Jamie’s house?” Aaron asked Cole at their next noon time lunch meeting. The meeting place was now a different place every day and they ate in the truck where they could talk in private. A regular place every day or every week didn’t seem like a good idea.
“Piece of cake,” replied Cole. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall! That cliché is certainly true, or at least it was this time. I added the knife to cover up his crushed throat. I figured that a crushed throat might point to someone with martial arts training, while a knife from the kitchen would look more like a weapon of opportunity.” Cole went on to go over all the details of the latest Damsel in Distress episode.
“This sounds like an action movie, instead of serious stuff,” said Aaron.
“How long is Jamie going to stay at your place?”
“I don’t know, she called a cleaning service to go in and clean the carpet and if they can’t get the blood stain out, she will replace it. At this point she refuses to even go into the house. “It has too many bad memories,” Jamie says.
She is going to sell it as soon as it’s cleaned up. The police and the insurance company want a report of anything stolen from her house. Jamie did go through the house but didn’t see anything missing. She said that there could have been some things missing from Glen’s stuff. We have an extra bedroom so we told Jamie that she can stay as long as she wants and off the record I like the idea of having 2 beautiful women in my house! If I wasn’t married to Rachel, I would go after her; she’s a genuine beauty inside and out. She’s as beautiful as anybody I have ever seen and yet she acts like the wholesome girl next door.”
Aaron grew serious, “the same cop, Detective Rizzo that investigated the Big Cottonwood Canyon episode was the investigator on this case. We never met at that time, but he gave me a funny half smile and acted like he knew me when he came over to talk to Jamie. He didn’t say anything that I can put my finger on, but gave me the impression that there is more going on behind his polite questions than appears on the surface.”
“How about Rachel, any sign that she thinks we’re connected with this slime bucket’s death?”
“No, I don’t think so. She may put it together later, but for now she hasn’t said anything.”
Each month Cole would put $1,000 into his family corporation. He had studied about investing in the money markets. He had practiced trading for almost a year with pretend money. His pretend profits were enormous. Along the way he had also lost some money, but overall his success rate was about 80%. He opened the trading account for real and began investing. He added the $1,000 every month. It appeared that this year the corporation would have a healthy profit. Enough profit to take the stockholders to some exotic place or a cruise for its annual meeting. “I can set you up to do the same thing if you want me to,” Cole told Aaron.
“I’m ready. You’ve convinced me. With what you’ve invested, you’re already realizing more income on a monthly basis than I am earning while working 40 hours per week.”
Aaron created a Nevada Corporation and began putting cash in the corporation on a monthly basis, just like Cole was doing. He opened a trading account with Cole’s advice. In a short time his corporation was making a profit almost every day. Some losses occurred, but just like in Cole’s experience, in about 80% of the time, he made a healthy profit.
Cole and Aaron continued to go to the martial arts class every Monday and every Thursday Night. They were both good enough that they graduated to the Expert Black Belt level. The instructor asked them to teach the class when he couldn’t be there.
Their proficiency with their pistols also reached the expert stage. The public firing range was a regular stop for Cole, Jan, and Aaron. Rachel was coming less often as her pregnancy progressed, but she had grown to love her pistol and took it everywhere in her purse.
“It has been almost 6 months since I promised you that I wouldn’t get into the drug money,” Cole said to Aaron as he handed him $1,000 cash. “I’ve been taking cash out of my account each payday so that it won’t be anything unusually for me to have lots of cash. Jan is still working, so we have a surplus even though I’ve set up a million dollar life insurance policy on me for Jan and a trust fund for Billy with the money from the sale of Jan’s’ house. I also have been putting some cash in our Family Corporation. This is the first time I’ve got into the drug money. I also took $1,000 for me.”
“I don’t know what I am going to do with it,” said Aaron.
“If you don’t want to handle it yet, give it back and I’ll put it back in the duffle bag.”
“Yeah, do that, I haven’t been thinking about the pile of money in your storage unit, I’ve been so busy at the office plus with Rachel getting pregnant we’ve been looking at baby stuff. Yeah put it back for now. It will ease my mind that the money is there if I need it. Are you going to the TAE KWON DO competition this weekend?”
“Yes, I wanted to actually see how I stack up against someone new. You’re getting really good, but I usually know what you’re going to do before you do it. How about you, are you going?”
“No, we have made other plans. Rachel has a big family reunion this weekend.”
At lunch the following Monday, Aaron asked, “how did it go, did you whip anybody?
“I did alright, won some and lost some. It was fun. Some of those experts are really scary. I would like to get that good, but as you know, it takes a lot of time to study and practice. I feel that I’m good enough to take anyone who hasn’t had a lot of martial arts training.”
“You’re a lot better than I am, even though you’re bigger than I am. I always thought that the bigger you were the slower you are, but you’re bigger and faster than I am,” said Aaron. I wanted to tell you about my reunion. One of Rachel’s cousins, or 2nd cousins or something, her name is Jamie, is going with this creep. She’s a true damsel in distress. Jamie is absolutely gorgeous even with the bruises all over her arms, legs, neck and face. She tried to cover up the bruises on her face with makeup but they showed through. She explained that she is totally uncoordinated and is always falling down or running into things. Her boyfriend wasn’t there. “He had to work”, she said. From the way she talked about this guy, she is terrified of him. Rachel told me that Jamie is a Registered Nurse at the University Hospital. She makes good money and has bought a house. She met this jerk and before she knew what had happened he had moved into her house and she was afraid to even suggest that he move out.”
“He’s a coach at the University. I guess he was away from town with some team back east. Rachel said that she has met him and he’s a total jerk. He’s always working out and she thinks that he takes steroids. He’s huge with muscles bulging out of his skin tight shirts. He entered the Mr. America competition but they threw him out after a drug test. He has been married before. Jamie found out that his ex-wife was so badly beaten one time she almost died. The county prosecutor wanted to put him in jail, but his wife wouldn’t cooperate with them, so they dropped the case. The guy slipped and told Jamie about his ex-wife. After that, he started threatening her and telling her that he would do the same thing to her if she ever tried to leave him. He’s been hinting that he thinks it’s time to get married and have some kids, but so far he hasn’t asked her to marry him. Jamie doesn’t know what to do. She absolutely will not marry him or have his child under any condition. She’s afraid of what he’ll do if she tells him to get out. She feels like she’s his sex slave.”
“Rachel told me Jamie wouldn’t answer her questions about where the bruises came from. Jamie knows that Rachel knows she isn’t uncoordinated. She knows that those bruises come from being beat up by her muscle bound boyfriend.”
“All in all he sounds like a complete human slime bucket. He’s one of those good old boys. Through his work at the University he is buddy buddy with many of the deep pocket University boosters. I guess he knows everybody and they all think that he’s this really neat guy,” said Aaron.
“Do you think we should go see him? He sounds like he’s muscle bound. I fought a guy that was a lot like that last weekend. He was strong as an ox and so slow that it was easy. Remember when we first started practicing and the instructor would go through the motions in slow motion so that we could see what he was talking about? It was almost like that.”
“Maybe you have just progressed to the point where it just seems that way?”
“I would like to think so; it could be a combination of both.
Anyway, up till I fought that guy I was intimidated by someone with muscles on top of muscles. Now I’m looking forward to meeting this slime bucket.”
“He’s at the University athletic facility every weekday until closing. He locks up when everybody is done for the day. Rachel said that Jamie told her the jerk is always trying to pick up the young co-eds. A few of them think that if they sleep with one of the coaches, it will give them an advantage. If he scores, he goes over to Jamie’s place later and will be nice and mellow. If he doesn’t score, he goes to Jamie’s place and will be in a mean, foul mood and take it out on her.”
“The more that I learn about this guy, the more I dislike him. Where does she live?”
“Rachel said that Jamie has her own house up on the bench, north of the University. It’s in the old part of town, an old house that has been remodeled, and lots of huge trees.” He handed Cole a slip of paper with the address written on it.
“What if you and Rachel invited Jamie over for dinner tonight? Tell her to leave a note for her muscle bound friend to come over when he gets home? At the last minute call Rachel and tell her that I had a flat tire and you’re helping me take care of it. You’ll be home as soon as you can. Then you go down to the University and watch for the jerk to leave the athletic facility, when he leaves call me and then go home. I should have enough time to park somewhere close and jog over to Jamie’s house. That area has people jogging up and down every street. No one will notice another jogger. If I’m early I’ll go around and around the block until he comes home. When he goes in the house I’ll follow him in, and practice one of the killing blows. Then I’ll go through the house and make it look like I was robbing the house and was surprised by the jerk. After I put him to sleep, I’ll jog back to the car, call your cell phone and let it ring once when I’m done.”
The muscle-bound jerk/coach circulated through the athletic facility hoping to talk one of the young female athletes into going out for a pizza. No luck, his reputation had pretty well ran its course with this year’s freshmen crop of any girls who might respond to a proposition from a University coach.
‘I can hardly wait until the new semester starts. Damn, well I’ll go see Jamie and have mad passionate sex with her. I’m getting tired of her attitude. I really shouldn’t hit her, but when she gives me the look like she despises me, I lose my temper. I don’t mean to hit her that hard either, but what the hell, it’s good for her, the little wench! She’s lucky that I moved in to protect her.’ With that he checked the entire facility, locked up and went out to get in his car.
‘There is nothing to do now but go to Jamie’s. Wonder what she’s fixed for supper. I really enjoy having a sex slave who can cook!’ He pulled up to the house but didn’t see her car. ‘Where in the hell is she, she had better not have ran off somewhere. I’ll find her and if she’s with somebody else, they both will spend a long time in the hospital!’ He went into the house and was reading Jamie’s note on the bulletin board when the door opened and a man in a hooded sweat shirt came in. He looked like a trained athlete by the way he moved. He thought it might be one of the assistant coaches, a defensive end or one of the line backers, until the guy reached up and flipped his hood back. It was a face the muscle bound coach didn’t recognize, “Who in the hell are you?”
COLE
Cole sat in the car in a grocery store parking lot. The University has a parking lot closer, but it was patrolled by campus security to insure that the cars parked there had the proper permit and he didn’t have a permit. ‘This is close enough.’
His cell phone chimed, “he’s getting in his car now, and it’s a red Jeep.”
“Thanks for the help with the flat tire, see you tomorrow, tell Rachel hi for us.”
Cole put on his gloves, got out of his truck, locked it, flipped the sweatshirt hood over his head and started up the street toward Jamie’s house. The timing was perfect. He was about 3 houses away from Jamie’s place when a red jeep pulled up. Cole slowed down hoping the jerk wouldn’t notice him. A big guy got out of the Jeep and walked to the house, unlocked the front door, and went inside. He didn’t seem to notice Cole. The door closed, Cole jogged up and opened the door. He stepped in and flipped the hood off his head. The jerk said, “Who in the hell are you?”
The door swung closed as Cole flipped the hood back off his head and stepped toward the jerk. The jerk stood there glaring as if his muscles and girth would be enough to intimidate anyone. He placed his hands on his hips with a threatening look and was waiting for Cole to say something. Cole hit him in his neck below his chin just as hard as he could. The jerk dropped like someone had dropped a ton of rocks on his head.
‘This is supposed to look like a robbery gone bad, since he’s a goner anyway, a knife in the throat will probably cover the crushed neck.’ Cole went into the kitchen, looked around and spotted a knife set sitting in a wooden block on the counter. He took out the biggest one, ‘this one should do’, and went back in where the jerk was grabbing at his throat and gasping.
“You don’t look like you’re doing very well. Hey man, does your throat hurt, hmm, I’m afraid that this might hurt a little, but only for a little while.” The jerk’s face was pale and his eyes were closed. Cole reached down and thrust the knife into the jerk’s throat beneath his hand, being careful not to cut his hand. It looked like he had hit an artery and blood started squirting out through the jerk’s fingers. Cole ran upstairs and into the bedroom, he pulled out drawers and threw the contents around the room. There was a picture on a pretty girl and the jerk on top of a dresser. It must have been Jamie.
‘Wow, she’s gorgeous. She’s much too beautiful for that jerk’. He then went downstairs and made a mess of the kitchen, bathroom, and front room.
‘OK, I’m out of here.’ He stepped around the pool of blood. The jerk had quit moving. Cole was careful to not step into the blood. The floors were covered by a carpet, so not much chance of leaving a footprint behind. Cole stepped to the door and opened the door slowly. There was nobody in sight, so he stepped out and jogged down to the street and back to the car. When he got to the car, he pulled out his cell phone and called Aaron letting it ring once before hanging up.
Aaron didn’t want Jamie to go home by herself. He had only met her a few days before, but didn’t think that she would cope well with going into her house and seeing her former nemesis dead on the floor. At least he assumed he would be dead on the floor. He also wanted to delay her a little longer because he didn’t know how long Cole would need. When he got home he went in and joined Rachel and Jamie. By that time dinner was ready, “have you heard from your friend yet?”
“I wish you wouldn’t refer to him as my friend!”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“No problem, you would naturally assume, if a guy was living with me, he must be a friend! No, I haven’t heard from him yet. If something developed in the athletic complex he would be at least another hour, maybe 2 before he gets home. If he hasn’t called by the time we’re done eating, then I’ll get worried.”
Aaron tried to be his most entertaining self. He had both girls laughing and kidding around so much that the dinner took twice as long as it should have. In the middle of dinner, his cell phone rang once. He looked at the phone and with a puzzled look on his face, “must have been a wrong number.”
“Still no word from your muscle-bound…jerk”, Aaron asked as Rachel was serving desert?
Jamie giggled, “I like that description better…muscle-bound jerk.” She dropped the smile, “He should have called by now. He’ll be really mad. His temper is so bad that he just explodes when I’m not where he expects me to be. I’m afraid to go home!”
“Don’t worry,” reassured Aaron, “we’ll go home with you and make sure that he calms down before we leave.”
“You would do that?”
Rachel said, “of course, you’re my favorite cousin.”
Aaron said, “You’re my favorite wife’s favorite cousin.”
Jamie laughed and her mood brightened. She pulled up to her house with Aaron and Rachel right behind her. Jamie got out and waited for Aaron and Rachel.
“His car is here, and the light is on in the house, I’m scared.”
“Let’s go in and face him,” Aaron said.
“Ok, I’m ready.”
Jamie opened the door with Aaron and Rachel right behind her, she screamed, turned and grabbed at Aaron sobbing. Aaron looked around Jamie and saw a big body on the floor lying in a pool of blood. “Rachel, please call 911.”
Since the house was in town, the police officers were there in a matter of minutes. They went through the routine questions that the police always ask. “Do you know the victim?” “Where were you?” “When did you last see and talk to the victim?” “Did he have any enemies?” “Is anything missing?”
Jamie was in no condition to answer questions. Aaron finally convinced the officer in charge to let him take her home with them.
The investigating officer took Aaron’s address and told them that a detective would come see them tomorrow.
When they reached their house, Jamie had recovered enough to talk to them. “I can’t believe it. I talked to him today and now he’s dead. I know it’s horrible to say and to even think, but I can’t say that I’m sorry he’s dead. He was such a horrible, 2-faced bully. He was a muscle-bound jerk with no concern with anybody except himself. What do I tell the police?”
I don’t think that I would tell them that you’re glad he’s dead, but I think that you should be honest about what kind of person he was and how he beat you and raped you whenever he felt like it. The police will be able to examine your bruises, and check their records about his ex-wife and the beatings. In fact, when they ask about his enemies, you might mention his ex-wife. Be sure to mention that he propositioned the female college athletes every night and if he was unsuccessful, he would take it out on you,” said Aaron.
The next day police detective Rizzo came to Aaron & Rachel’s home to talk to Jamie. Rizzo wrote everyone’s name down. He visibly hesitated and looked at Aaron when he heard the name Aaron Johnson, then he went through the standard questions again. Jamie was in control and spelled it out for Rizzo. The detective didn’t seem surprised about anything that Jamie said. When he finished, he told Jamie that he would be in touch and gave her his card. Rizzo paused, looked Aaron in the eye and revealed some of his inner thoughts with a half smile and acted like he was about to say something, he turned to Jamie, “If you think of anything else, just call me.”
After Rizzo left, “Do you know that detective,” asked Rachel?
“Never saw him before in my life, but he acted like he knows me. I wonder what that was all about.”
Rizzo got the name of the ex-wife from the police reports and called her. After Rizzo told her about the death of her ex-husband she said, “My prayers have been answered! My ex-husband was a dangerous, cowardly, muscle-bound bully. I know that he was on track to kill somebody. I’m so thankful that he died before he killed me or somebody else.”
“Why did you drop the charges when he put you in the hospital?”
“I got pressure, from all kinds of people who didn’t really know him, to back off and drop the charges. These people couldn’t or wouldn’t’ believe that this guy could hurt a fly. Some of these people were wealthy boosters of the University and didn’t want any bad publicity. It became clear to me that he would never be convicted and when the trial was over, he might get a slap on the wrist and then he would find me and probably kill me. One of the boosters promised me a good job if I dropped the charges. That’s where I work now. I’m very happy that it worked out like it did. Now I can rest easy.”
“Where were you last night?”
“I was with my husband. We were married as soon as the divorce was final. We ate at Chang’s Chinese Palace about 7 PM, then came home and went to bed. I’m sure that you can verify with the people at Chang’s that we were there from 6:30 PM to about 8 PM. What time of day did the murder happen?”
“The body was discovered about 9:30 PM. The time of death was estimated to be about 7 PM. Thanks for your help. If you have any questions, or if something comes up, please call me at the downtown police department.”
There was a newspaper story the next day. “A popular coach at the University of Utah was killed in what appears to be an attempted robbery. Glen Chapman was found dead, by his roommate and friends, in his home just before midnight last night. Police theorize that Mr. Chapman entered his home in the University area and surprised a burglar or burglars. He was stabbed with a knife from the kitchen. If you have any information about this incident please call the police.”
Rizzo read the report from the medical examiner. The autopsy results:
CAUSE OF DEATH-Victim bled to death. Knife wound in throat. The knife was still in throat at the beginning of the autopsy. It appeared that the larynx was crushed. The force of the knife could have caused some similar damage but it’s unlikely the injuries would have been this extensive.
NOTES Steroids and male enhancement drugs were found in the blood sample.
The Crime Scene Investigators found nothing of interest to give any clues about the murderer.
Rizzo, as was his custom, sat in his locked office and talked to himself. He went over the case, ‘It’s been kind of quiet for the last year for you 2, Robin Hood. I wondered if you had retired or what. I’ve seen the police reports about this guy. You took another human slime parasite from the city. There is no evidence to point toward you guys,’ recited Rizzo to his window and the mountains beyond. ‘I wondered just how much Cole has learned in his marital arts class. The crushed larynx is not seen every day. It’s almost time!’ He stamped CASE PENDING on the official file. The case would be transferred to the UNSOLVED CASES-DEAD FILE if nothing more was found. He had no official evidence or clues toward finding the killer.
His interview with Jamie revealed more about just exactly what kind of human slimy predator this guy was. The people with an obvious motive to kill this guy (his ex-wife and his live-in girlfriend) both had iron clad alibis. Then he took the newspaper clipping about the murder and placed it in the unmarked file in the back of his file drawer.
“What happened in Jamie’s house?” Aaron asked Cole at their next noon time lunch meeting. The meeting place was now a different place every day and they ate in the truck where they could talk in private. A regular place every day or every week didn’t seem like a good idea.
“Piece of cake,” replied Cole. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall! That cliché is certainly true, or at least it was this time. I added the knife to cover up his crushed throat. I figured that a crushed throat might point to someone with martial arts training, while a knife from the kitchen would look more like a weapon of opportunity.” Cole went on to go over all the details of the latest Damsel in Distress episode.
“This sounds like an action movie, instead of serious stuff,” said Aaron.
“How long is Jamie going to stay at your place?”
“I don’t know, she called a cleaning service to go in and clean the carpet and if they can’t get the blood stain out, she will replace it. At this point she refuses to even go into the house. “It has too many bad memories,” Jamie says.
She is going to sell it as soon as it’s cleaned up. The police and the insurance company want a report of anything stolen from her house. Jamie did go through the house but didn’t see anything missing. She said that there could have been some things missing from Glen’s stuff. We have an extra bedroom so we told Jamie that she can stay as long as she wants and off the record I like the idea of having 2 beautiful women in my house! If I wasn’t married to Rachel, I would go after her; she’s a genuine beauty inside and out. She’s as beautiful as anybody I have ever seen and yet she acts like the wholesome girl next door.”
Aaron grew serious, “the same cop, Detective Rizzo that investigated the Big Cottonwood Canyon episode was the investigator on this case. We never met at that time, but he gave me a funny half smile and acted like he knew me when he came over to talk to Jamie. He didn’t say anything that I can put my finger on, but gave me the impression that there is more going on behind his polite questions than appears on the surface.”
“How about Rachel, any sign that she thinks we’re connected with this slime bucket’s death?”
“No, I don’t think so. She may put it together later, but for now she hasn’t said anything.”
Each month Cole would put $1,000 into his family corporation. He had studied about investing in the money markets. He had practiced trading for almost a year with pretend money. His pretend profits were enormous. Along the way he had also lost some money, but overall his success rate was about 80%. He opened the trading account for real and began investing. He added the $1,000 every month. It appeared that this year the corporation would have a healthy profit. Enough profit to take the stockholders to some exotic place or a cruise for its annual meeting. “I can set you up to do the same thing if you want me to,” Cole told Aaron.
“I’m ready. You’ve convinced me. With what you’ve invested, you’re already realizing more income on a monthly basis than I am earning while working 40 hours per week.”
Aaron created a Nevada Corporation and began putting cash in the corporation on a monthly basis, just like Cole was doing. He opened a trading account with Cole’s advice. In a short time his corporation was making a profit almost every day. Some losses occurred, but just like in Cole’s experience, in about 80% of the time, he made a healthy profit.
Cole and Aaron continued to go to the martial arts class every Monday and every Thursday Night. They were both good enough that they graduated to the Expert Black Belt level. The instructor asked them to teach the class when he couldn’t be there.
Their proficiency with their pistols also reached the expert stage. The public firing range was a regular stop for Cole, Jan, and Aaron. Rachel was coming less often as her pregnancy progressed, but she had grown to love her pistol and took it everywhere in her purse.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Chapter Six
ROBIN HOOD TO THE RESCUE
The next day at their regular lunch meeting, they were sitting outside a hamburger drive-in, under a big white umbrella, when Aaron said, “look at the girl in the black Mercedes.”
“Ok, the angle is bad, I can only see a silhouette, what are you seeing?”
“I glanced over at her, it’s a natural reaction of mine, I take a look at every young woman. Anyway, I glanced at her and she slowly shaped the words “PLEASE HELP ME.” I did a double take and she looked at the guy driving. I looked at him and he was looking at me and flipped me off! I looked back at her and she was looking at the floor and I could see bruises on her neck and cheek.”
Cole looked at the driver and also received the standard attitude greeting, a middle finger salute. The driver then reached over and slapped the girl across the face, hard! Looks like another rabid dog to me. Shall we follow them and see what develops?”
“I’ll call my office and tell them I’ll be late.”
The Mercedes pulled out from the drive-in window and onto the street. They hurried to Cole’s truck and were able to get on the street in time to keep the black Mercedes in sight. They followed it down State Street. The Mercedes turned up a side street and pulled into the driveway of an old, remodeled house with a detached garage. The garage door went up, the Mercedes pulled inside and the door closed. Cole pulled up to the closed garage door and both he and Aaron jumped out.
“Maybe this would be a good time to put our gloves on, just in case” said Cole as he grabbed the tire iron from under his seat. They ran around the garage until they came to the door. There was a covered walkway that led to the house. The door from the garage was closed. They could hear screaming and yelling coming from inside. They heard a loud thump like a head hitting the side of the car and it went quiet.
“Let’s go inside and take care of this jerk!”
“Wait just a minute, the door is probably locked. When he opens the door, he’ll either be carrying the girl or at least dragging her, so he’ll have at most, one hand free, and if he’s carrying her we can grab him and disable him before he can do anything.” whispered Cole. “You grab his arms and I’ll hit him on the head. I’ll try to hit him hard enough to knock him out.”
“Click”, the door opened slowly as the slime bag, pushed the door open with his foot. He was carrying the girl and hanging onto the sack from the drive-in. The girl was unconscious. He saw Cole first and snarled, “What the hell are you doing here?” He tried to drop the girl in time to get his hands clear so he could grab the pistol in his belt, but Aaron grabbed his arms and pinned him against the wall. Cole stepped in and swung the tire iron. It hit slime bag on top of the head with a satisfying thunck and the slime bag was out cold.
“Did I hit him too hard,” asked Cole?
“That’s not possible, if he’s still alive, you didn’t hit him hard enough.” They looked closer and he wasn’t breathing. “Oh shoot, it looks like I killed him.”
“Let’s get out of here”, said Aaron.
“Let’s take her in the house first.” Cole pushed the dead guy off her and picked her up. The keys fell to the floor. Aaron picked up the keys and opened the door.
They went into the house and were shocked. On the kitchen table was an open briefcase full of money. Beside it were sacks of white stuff that they thought were cocaine, and other piles of little rock like things that they assumed was meth or crak. “It appears that this guy was a major drug supplier. Let’s go through the house quickly and see what else is up for grabs. I’ll meet you back here, said Cole.
Cole came into the kitchen carrying another brief case and Aaron had a duffle bag. “Another money bag, this one is full of 10s and 20s. What’s in the duffle bag,” asked Cole.
“It’s full of pistols, ammo, and knives.”
“This is going to look like a drug related robbery. I’m going to put her down beside the telephone, call 911 and whisper HELP ME. Then we’ll get out of here. Before I make the call, can you see anyone outside?”
“Not a soul, coast is clear.”
Cole called 911 and whispered “help me” in his sexiest, female impersonating voice. He put the phone in her hand and then picked up both brief cases while Aaron took the duffle bag and they went out to the truck. They put the contraband behind the front seat of the truck.
“Any traffic or neighbors watching us,” asked Cole as he got to the truck.
“All clear, as far as I can see, of course, who knows how many people are watching out their windows”, said Aaron.
They pulled back onto the street and drove back the way they had come. They reached State Street and drove 2 or 3 blocks before a South Salt Lake City Police cruiser went speeding by with its sirens and warning lights on. “It didn’t take them long to respond to the 911 call”, laughed Aaron.
“I’ll drop you off at the drive-in to get your truck and then let’s meet at the gym tonight, said Cole.
At the gym, in the sauna, Aaron asked “did you get a chance to count the money?”
“Yeah I had to know how much was there. I counted it before I got back to the office. There is $250,000 in that first briefcase in $100’s. In the second briefcase there is $25.000. There are three 9 MM semi-automatic pistols, 8 boxes of ammunition and some knifes.”
“Great Scott”, yelped Aaron. ”What do we do with it.”
“I don’t know; do you have any ideas? I thought that a little money would be a good idea in case some of the victims that we help need some financial help. It seems to me that we need to hide the money so that nobody, and I mean nobody, knows that we have it. Those briefcases tie us to a murder but worse, it ties us to a robbery from some really bad people. I wanted to make it look like a robbery gone bad, but I had no idea that there was that much money in the briefcase. Some bad people are going to be really pissed off losing that much money and then the drugs to the police. I wonder what the street value was of the drugs that were on the table.”
“I have no idea. Maybe the news will give us an idea. I think we should have taken the drugs as well or flushed them down the toilet, then maybe it would have looked like it was a rival drug dealer who had robbed them,” suggested Aaron.
“Right now the briefcases and the duffle bag are locked up tight in my storage unit. I had a big box full of stuff in the truck, so I put the briefcases inside a box and took the box in the storage unit. You never know who is watching through those cameras. It’s not the safest place to put it, but for now, is should be ok. The unit has 24 hour security with cameras and after-hour guard dogs that are turned loose in the complex after closing. I’ve never heard of anyone’s unit being robbed in that complex. I lost my key once and had a really hard time getting them to let me cut the old padlock off and put on a new one. The next time we get a chance, I going to take some more duffle bags to the unit, and cut the briefcases in little pieces with my handy dandy, all purpose; battery powered Sawzz All, and get rid of it. I’ll do it inside the storage unit out of sight of the cameras.”
The news story in the newspaper told about a major drug supplier found dead in South Salt Lake City. “Robbery appears to be the motive although $150,000 (street value) worth of drugs was found by the police in the home where he was found. A 911 call led to the discovery of the robbery and murder. If you have any information, please call your local police department. A reward is offered for any information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator(s).
MANNY
Emmanuel Alverez, everybody called him Manny, was having a bad day. Not just a bad day but a horrible day. It started bad when he got a call from Rico. Rico was the trouble shooter; some called him the enforcer, for Harry Trong. Trong controlled the drug organization for Utah. Rico only called Manny when things were going bad. Rico told Manny that he had heard that one of Manny’s distributors had kidnapped a young girl. It was news to Manny and it surprised him. He knew that most of his distributors liked young girls. But it surprised him that any of them would kidnap a girl when all of the free sex was there for the asking. Ricardo liked to get kinky. He had almost killed a girl a few months ago. It had cost a lot of money to keep it quiet. Ricardo had promised to never do it again.
“In our line of work, the last thing that we need is publicity” Manny had told Ricardo. “If you do something stupid like this again, I’ll have to terminate you. Do you understand me?”
“Yeah Manny, no problem, it won’t happen again. You can depend on me.”
“I am depending on you. That’s why you’re still alive! Don’t disappoint me again! Go do your job!”
Rico said, “I hear that your man Ricardo took a student from the Community College. We understand that Ricardo grabbed her and threw her into his car. I knew that you would want to know as soon as possible. Manny, you must take care of this before the word gets back to Samboli. It will make us all look bad, especially you. Your organization has always been an example to the rest of us. If you don’t handle this quickly, you will lose face and it will be a hard road to climb back where you are now.”
“You can trust me to handle it. Consider the matter closed,” said Manny.
Manny sent a couple of his men over to see Ricardo. They were to bring Ricardo, all his money and inventory back to see Manny. “If there’s a girl there, bring her too.”
2 police cruisers were pulling up to Ricardo’s house as Manny’s hired muscle turned up the street. Another police car was parked in the drive way. The passenger in the car pulled out his cell phone, “Manny, 2 police cars just pulled up to Ricardo’s house and there’s another one parked in the driveway.”
“Is there any way for you to go into the house in front of them? We were supposed to pick up $250,000 from him this afternoon. Plus he has almost that much product. I don’t want to take a half million dollar hit.”
“I’m sorry Manny; they just went into the house.”
“I WANT MY MONEY AND THE INVENTORY!” GO IN THERE AND GET IT!
“Manny, an ambulance and one more police car just pulled up. There are too many of them! We can’t just go in there and start shooting! They’ll kill us!”
Manny was so mad that he was shaking, “Stay there and see if you can learn what happened to Ricardo. Don’t let the police know you’re there. When you find out what happened, get back here.” He thought to himself, ‘Business has been so good for so long, I guess a loss now and then should be expected. This is my first loss.’ He took a few deep breaths, then a walk outside the house, and then he felt better. The team that he had sent for Ricardo drove in.
“We did like you told us. The police were all over the place. They brought box after box out of the house. We didn’t see any brief cases or duffle bags. The ambulance people came out with a black plastic bag on a stretcher. They also brought out a girl on another stretcher to a 2nd ambulance. She looked kind of beat up. That’s when we came back.”
“Rico, it seems that the problem we spoke about has escalated,” calmly reported Manny, “it appears that it was a total loss. I would estimate our loss at half a million. I don’t know what happened to the money or drugs. I assume they all were recovered by the police. We won’t have any more problems with Ricardo, he’s dead.”
“Dead, did your people do it?”
“No, if my people had killed him, I would still have the money and the inventory? I don’t know what happened. You told me that he has kidnapped a girl, so I send a couple of my men over to bring him and the girl to me. When my men got there, the police are already there with ambulances. My men watched the police bring out boxes of stuff that we assume was the drugs. They didn’t bring out any briefcases or duffle bags. The money would have been in a briefcase and a duffle bag. They also brought out 2 stretchers, one was a stiff in a body bag, and the other was the girl who wasn’t moving. We believe the stiff was Ricardo.”
“My people are not going to be happy with this loss. What about the rest of this week’s receipts?”
“The balance of this week’s take should be normal. I expect approximately $2.5 million. I’ll notify you as soon as I have the exact numbers.
RIZZO
Detective Rizzo reviewed the case of the killed drug supplier. There was a young woman also found at the scene. This information was not given to the news media. The young woman had been kidnapped; it was assumed that she made the 911 call. However, she denies making the call. According to her sworn statement, she “was beaten and knocked out in the kidnapper’s garage and she woke up in an ambulance. The kidnapper had taken her to a hamburger drive-in and she said that she had the chance to mouth out a “PLEASE HELP ME” to a couple of men who were eating outside the drive-in. They appeared to understand what I said, the kidnaper became angry when he saw them looking at me. He slapped me hard and told me to shut up or he would kill me right there.” She had seen the name of the drive-In restaurant and told the police.
A canvas of the neighbors where the drug supplier was found turned up one person who reported that she had seen a truck pull into the driveway of the victims’ house. She had also noted 2 men getting out of the truck but didn’t notice anything else about them. She didn’t take note of the license number and couldn’t even remember the color. If any other neighbors have seen anything, they were not talking. The neighbors told them that there were lots of traffic coming and going to that house at all hours of the day and night. The bad guy had a nasty dent in the top of his head that appeared to be the cause of death. The medical examiner confirmed that suspicion. The crime scene investigators didn’t come up with any fingerprints other than the kidnapped girl and the victim. The murder weapon was not found. From the wound, the investigators figured it was a pipe or maybe a tire iron.
Underworld informants had told him that there was a lot of money in the house that was supposed to be picked up later that afternoon. Pressure was high to find the person who had stolen “their money.” Some known drug people had disappeared. Rizzo was in favor of drug wars. He felt that drug people shooting each other was a good thing. The only problem he could see was when innocent people sometimes got in the middle when drug people were shooting at each other.
The only clue to the murder that he had was 2 guys at the house getting out of a truck, and the 2 guys eating outside the drive-in restaurant. He assumed they were the same 2 people. How many people eat hamburgers and drive a truck! He talked to the employees who were working at that time in the drive-in restaurant. They all spoke broken English and couldn’t or wouldn’t help him. ‘Help me, hell, they were probably all illegal aliens and were scared to even talk to me! If they remembered anything they were sure not going to tell me!’
The kidnapped girl was returned to her family to the accompaniment of a joyous celebration. To the newspaper reporter she publicly thanked the Salt Lake City Police but most of all she was grateful to the wonderful Good Samaritans who she believes saved her life. She also told reporters that there was a lot of money on the table that her rescuers must have taken. Her parents echoed the thanks and said that perhaps instead of a Good Samaritan, it was in fact more like Robin Hood. The newspaper and TV reporters picked up on the Robin Hood idea, and for a few days everyone was talking about Robin Hood vs. the Kidnapper.
Rizzo thought, ‘I wonder what our good friend Cole was doing at the time all this happened?’ He cut out the newspaper story of the ROBIN HOOD VS THE KIDNAPPER incident, and put it in the unmarked file in the back of his file cabinet. ‘Officially I have no reason to connect Cole with this incident, and as happens quite often lately, the good guys win another battle. I don’t have time to spend trying to solve a murder that on the surface involves drug people killing each other, so CASE UNSOLVED-DEAD FILE. I am a little concerned about the newspaper stories glorifying the ROBIN HOOD angle, and not sure where that will lead.’
MARTIAL ARTS
“I don’t think that we should go to our favorite hamburger restaurant for awhile. That is the only connection that I can think of between us and the death of the rabid dog,” said Cole to Aaron. Cole had called Aaron at work after the news story about Robin Hood being alive and well in Salt Lake City. They agreed to meet at a different drive-in restaurant. After getting their order, they got in Jan’s car.
“Why are you driving Jan’s car,” asked Aaron?
“I’m probably getting paranoid. I just thought that I should leave my truck home for awhile. Someone could have seen it parked in that guy’s driveway. Maybe we should back off for awhile.”
“I guess we could do that. We haven’t been out looking for damsels in distress. We have just helped them when we had the opportunity. Did you listen to the radio today?”
“No, I don’t generally listen to anything except my music while I’m driving to work.”
Aaron continued, “It seems that a policeman was arrested for abusing his wife. He was beating her up. He locked her up and cut the telephone lines so that she couldn’t call for help. I don’t remember how the word got out, but the policeman is on paid leave until the department can sort it out.”
“I don’t know about you, but I think we had better stay away from that one. It just occurred to me that it would probably be a good idea if we took some self defense classes at the gym and maybe get a concealed weapon permit.”
“Are you serious”, Aaron questioned?
“Why not, I don’t know about you but I’ve never done much fighting and in our new part time job of being Robin Hood, it might come in handy if I knew more about how to fight and defend myself. I checked at the gym the other day and there is a beginning level class for some Korean martial arts classes called TAE KWON DO starting next week. I signed us up.”
“You signed me up too,” whined Aaron?
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want too; there’s no cost for the first 5 beginning lessons. Then it’s only $15 per lesson. The lessons are twice per week, on Monday and Thursday nights at 7 PM. First class is tomorrow night. Are you going to go?”
“I guess I could at least try it, especially if it’s free,” said Aaron.
Cole changed the subject, “any thoughts about the money in my storage unit?”
“We’ve only had the drug money for a couple of days, no, I haven’t really thought about it.”
“My family has a corporation. The corporation owns some stock that earns a little money and pays us some dividends each year. It’s just enough to pay the annual corporate registration and buy us dinner. I could put a little of the money each month in the corporation and put it to work. I know some really great investment strategies that could multiply the investment. If it doesn’t work, what have we lost?”
“It scares me to think of doing anything with that money.”
“Look at it this way; if the bad guys find us and the money, we are going to be just as dead whether they recover all of it, or none of it.”
“Well that’s a comforting thought,” snorted Aaron!
“It isn’t like we are going out and buying new cars, houses, or suddenly changing our standard of living. I’m talking about taking maybe $1,000 per month and putting it in the Corporation. That’s an amount that Jan and I could easily do now, especially since she has sold the house. We have some time to reinvest the money that we received in a new house to delay the income taxes, so in the meantime, a little slipped into the corporation shouldn’t raise any flags even if somebody was watching. But you’re probably right; I won’t pull any money out of the storage unit for now, does that make you feel better?”
“Completely, have you destroyed the briefcase yet?”
“I plan on going over there this weekend and making the switch. I have some duffle bags in storage already. So I’ll go in the storage unit, rip the briefcase up and come out with a box full of scraps. I’ll then burn the scraps in our back yard fireplace. When the fire has cooled, I’ll clean out the ashes, including the briefcase hardware, and drop them into a dumpster somewhere.”
“Sounds like a plan. Same time, same place tomorrow?”
The next 4 months were busy and flew by quickly. In that time both Cole and Aaron learned a lot in the TAE KWON DO classes. They graduated from the beginning class and started the next level. It was quickly apparent to both of them that their skill in attacking someone or defending themselves was almost non-existent. They were getting more confident each week. The bruises and sore muscles marked their progress. They each had also applied for a concealed weapon permit. They expected to receive the approval letter soon.
Detective Rizzo received a report of all concealed weapon permit applications. He noted the ones from Cole Taylor and Aaron Johnson. He laughed out loud but not loud enough to be heard outside his office, ‘Now you guys are getting a concealed weapon permit. You were doing pretty well without a concealed weapon! Hey there Cole Taylor and Aaron Johnson, I can hardly wait to see what happens next.’
More time passed with Cole and Aaron learning how to protect themselves with all kinds of weapons, but mostly with their hands and feet. They had not realized just how dangerous a person can be if that person understands what to do and how to do it.
They had received their concealed weapon permit. The bag of pistols and knives that they had liberated from the dead drug dealer contained three 9 MM Rugers. They each took one of the 9 MMs. In addition Aaron bought a 38 Smith & Wesson revolver for the girls to shoot. The girls thought it was great fun to go with them to practice shooting. They went through a lot of ammunition and made a lot of noise. Cole and Aaron were getting better, but still had a long way to go before they would be classified as expert. Just to be able to consistently hit a 4 inch circle was the immediate goal. The surprising thing was that of the 2 couples, Jan was the best shot. That statistic could change but for the time being, Cole and Aaron had to bow to the weaker sex. Jan consistently won 7 out of 10 times.
“It’s embarrassing, said Aaron to Cole. Your wife is a better shot than either of us.”
“I think it’s kind of cool, I’m going to help her get a permit and a smaller pistol. I’ll bet that she will be even better with a smaller caliber. How about Rachel, is she interested in having her own gun?”
“Probably, as long as we are all going shooting on a regular basis, she is going to want one. She will insist, especially if Jan gets one. Actually, I would feel better about her being at home alone if she had a gun handy.”
The next day at their regular lunch meeting, they were sitting outside a hamburger drive-in, under a big white umbrella, when Aaron said, “look at the girl in the black Mercedes.”
“Ok, the angle is bad, I can only see a silhouette, what are you seeing?”
“I glanced over at her, it’s a natural reaction of mine, I take a look at every young woman. Anyway, I glanced at her and she slowly shaped the words “PLEASE HELP ME.” I did a double take and she looked at the guy driving. I looked at him and he was looking at me and flipped me off! I looked back at her and she was looking at the floor and I could see bruises on her neck and cheek.”
Cole looked at the driver and also received the standard attitude greeting, a middle finger salute. The driver then reached over and slapped the girl across the face, hard! Looks like another rabid dog to me. Shall we follow them and see what develops?”
“I’ll call my office and tell them I’ll be late.”
The Mercedes pulled out from the drive-in window and onto the street. They hurried to Cole’s truck and were able to get on the street in time to keep the black Mercedes in sight. They followed it down State Street. The Mercedes turned up a side street and pulled into the driveway of an old, remodeled house with a detached garage. The garage door went up, the Mercedes pulled inside and the door closed. Cole pulled up to the closed garage door and both he and Aaron jumped out.
“Maybe this would be a good time to put our gloves on, just in case” said Cole as he grabbed the tire iron from under his seat. They ran around the garage until they came to the door. There was a covered walkway that led to the house. The door from the garage was closed. They could hear screaming and yelling coming from inside. They heard a loud thump like a head hitting the side of the car and it went quiet.
“Let’s go inside and take care of this jerk!”
“Wait just a minute, the door is probably locked. When he opens the door, he’ll either be carrying the girl or at least dragging her, so he’ll have at most, one hand free, and if he’s carrying her we can grab him and disable him before he can do anything.” whispered Cole. “You grab his arms and I’ll hit him on the head. I’ll try to hit him hard enough to knock him out.”
“Click”, the door opened slowly as the slime bag, pushed the door open with his foot. He was carrying the girl and hanging onto the sack from the drive-in. The girl was unconscious. He saw Cole first and snarled, “What the hell are you doing here?” He tried to drop the girl in time to get his hands clear so he could grab the pistol in his belt, but Aaron grabbed his arms and pinned him against the wall. Cole stepped in and swung the tire iron. It hit slime bag on top of the head with a satisfying thunck and the slime bag was out cold.
“Did I hit him too hard,” asked Cole?
“That’s not possible, if he’s still alive, you didn’t hit him hard enough.” They looked closer and he wasn’t breathing. “Oh shoot, it looks like I killed him.”
“Let’s get out of here”, said Aaron.
“Let’s take her in the house first.” Cole pushed the dead guy off her and picked her up. The keys fell to the floor. Aaron picked up the keys and opened the door.
They went into the house and were shocked. On the kitchen table was an open briefcase full of money. Beside it were sacks of white stuff that they thought were cocaine, and other piles of little rock like things that they assumed was meth or crak. “It appears that this guy was a major drug supplier. Let’s go through the house quickly and see what else is up for grabs. I’ll meet you back here, said Cole.
Cole came into the kitchen carrying another brief case and Aaron had a duffle bag. “Another money bag, this one is full of 10s and 20s. What’s in the duffle bag,” asked Cole.
“It’s full of pistols, ammo, and knives.”
“This is going to look like a drug related robbery. I’m going to put her down beside the telephone, call 911 and whisper HELP ME. Then we’ll get out of here. Before I make the call, can you see anyone outside?”
“Not a soul, coast is clear.”
Cole called 911 and whispered “help me” in his sexiest, female impersonating voice. He put the phone in her hand and then picked up both brief cases while Aaron took the duffle bag and they went out to the truck. They put the contraband behind the front seat of the truck.
“Any traffic or neighbors watching us,” asked Cole as he got to the truck.
“All clear, as far as I can see, of course, who knows how many people are watching out their windows”, said Aaron.
They pulled back onto the street and drove back the way they had come. They reached State Street and drove 2 or 3 blocks before a South Salt Lake City Police cruiser went speeding by with its sirens and warning lights on. “It didn’t take them long to respond to the 911 call”, laughed Aaron.
“I’ll drop you off at the drive-in to get your truck and then let’s meet at the gym tonight, said Cole.
At the gym, in the sauna, Aaron asked “did you get a chance to count the money?”
“Yeah I had to know how much was there. I counted it before I got back to the office. There is $250,000 in that first briefcase in $100’s. In the second briefcase there is $25.000. There are three 9 MM semi-automatic pistols, 8 boxes of ammunition and some knifes.”
“Great Scott”, yelped Aaron. ”What do we do with it.”
“I don’t know; do you have any ideas? I thought that a little money would be a good idea in case some of the victims that we help need some financial help. It seems to me that we need to hide the money so that nobody, and I mean nobody, knows that we have it. Those briefcases tie us to a murder but worse, it ties us to a robbery from some really bad people. I wanted to make it look like a robbery gone bad, but I had no idea that there was that much money in the briefcase. Some bad people are going to be really pissed off losing that much money and then the drugs to the police. I wonder what the street value was of the drugs that were on the table.”
“I have no idea. Maybe the news will give us an idea. I think we should have taken the drugs as well or flushed them down the toilet, then maybe it would have looked like it was a rival drug dealer who had robbed them,” suggested Aaron.
“Right now the briefcases and the duffle bag are locked up tight in my storage unit. I had a big box full of stuff in the truck, so I put the briefcases inside a box and took the box in the storage unit. You never know who is watching through those cameras. It’s not the safest place to put it, but for now, is should be ok. The unit has 24 hour security with cameras and after-hour guard dogs that are turned loose in the complex after closing. I’ve never heard of anyone’s unit being robbed in that complex. I lost my key once and had a really hard time getting them to let me cut the old padlock off and put on a new one. The next time we get a chance, I going to take some more duffle bags to the unit, and cut the briefcases in little pieces with my handy dandy, all purpose; battery powered Sawzz All, and get rid of it. I’ll do it inside the storage unit out of sight of the cameras.”
The news story in the newspaper told about a major drug supplier found dead in South Salt Lake City. “Robbery appears to be the motive although $150,000 (street value) worth of drugs was found by the police in the home where he was found. A 911 call led to the discovery of the robbery and murder. If you have any information, please call your local police department. A reward is offered for any information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator(s).
MANNY
Emmanuel Alverez, everybody called him Manny, was having a bad day. Not just a bad day but a horrible day. It started bad when he got a call from Rico. Rico was the trouble shooter; some called him the enforcer, for Harry Trong. Trong controlled the drug organization for Utah. Rico only called Manny when things were going bad. Rico told Manny that he had heard that one of Manny’s distributors had kidnapped a young girl. It was news to Manny and it surprised him. He knew that most of his distributors liked young girls. But it surprised him that any of them would kidnap a girl when all of the free sex was there for the asking. Ricardo liked to get kinky. He had almost killed a girl a few months ago. It had cost a lot of money to keep it quiet. Ricardo had promised to never do it again.
“In our line of work, the last thing that we need is publicity” Manny had told Ricardo. “If you do something stupid like this again, I’ll have to terminate you. Do you understand me?”
“Yeah Manny, no problem, it won’t happen again. You can depend on me.”
“I am depending on you. That’s why you’re still alive! Don’t disappoint me again! Go do your job!”
Rico said, “I hear that your man Ricardo took a student from the Community College. We understand that Ricardo grabbed her and threw her into his car. I knew that you would want to know as soon as possible. Manny, you must take care of this before the word gets back to Samboli. It will make us all look bad, especially you. Your organization has always been an example to the rest of us. If you don’t handle this quickly, you will lose face and it will be a hard road to climb back where you are now.”
“You can trust me to handle it. Consider the matter closed,” said Manny.
Manny sent a couple of his men over to see Ricardo. They were to bring Ricardo, all his money and inventory back to see Manny. “If there’s a girl there, bring her too.”
2 police cruisers were pulling up to Ricardo’s house as Manny’s hired muscle turned up the street. Another police car was parked in the drive way. The passenger in the car pulled out his cell phone, “Manny, 2 police cars just pulled up to Ricardo’s house and there’s another one parked in the driveway.”
“Is there any way for you to go into the house in front of them? We were supposed to pick up $250,000 from him this afternoon. Plus he has almost that much product. I don’t want to take a half million dollar hit.”
“I’m sorry Manny; they just went into the house.”
“I WANT MY MONEY AND THE INVENTORY!” GO IN THERE AND GET IT!
“Manny, an ambulance and one more police car just pulled up. There are too many of them! We can’t just go in there and start shooting! They’ll kill us!”
Manny was so mad that he was shaking, “Stay there and see if you can learn what happened to Ricardo. Don’t let the police know you’re there. When you find out what happened, get back here.” He thought to himself, ‘Business has been so good for so long, I guess a loss now and then should be expected. This is my first loss.’ He took a few deep breaths, then a walk outside the house, and then he felt better. The team that he had sent for Ricardo drove in.
“We did like you told us. The police were all over the place. They brought box after box out of the house. We didn’t see any brief cases or duffle bags. The ambulance people came out with a black plastic bag on a stretcher. They also brought out a girl on another stretcher to a 2nd ambulance. She looked kind of beat up. That’s when we came back.”
“Rico, it seems that the problem we spoke about has escalated,” calmly reported Manny, “it appears that it was a total loss. I would estimate our loss at half a million. I don’t know what happened to the money or drugs. I assume they all were recovered by the police. We won’t have any more problems with Ricardo, he’s dead.”
“Dead, did your people do it?”
“No, if my people had killed him, I would still have the money and the inventory? I don’t know what happened. You told me that he has kidnapped a girl, so I send a couple of my men over to bring him and the girl to me. When my men got there, the police are already there with ambulances. My men watched the police bring out boxes of stuff that we assume was the drugs. They didn’t bring out any briefcases or duffle bags. The money would have been in a briefcase and a duffle bag. They also brought out 2 stretchers, one was a stiff in a body bag, and the other was the girl who wasn’t moving. We believe the stiff was Ricardo.”
“My people are not going to be happy with this loss. What about the rest of this week’s receipts?”
“The balance of this week’s take should be normal. I expect approximately $2.5 million. I’ll notify you as soon as I have the exact numbers.
RIZZO
Detective Rizzo reviewed the case of the killed drug supplier. There was a young woman also found at the scene. This information was not given to the news media. The young woman had been kidnapped; it was assumed that she made the 911 call. However, she denies making the call. According to her sworn statement, she “was beaten and knocked out in the kidnapper’s garage and she woke up in an ambulance. The kidnapper had taken her to a hamburger drive-in and she said that she had the chance to mouth out a “PLEASE HELP ME” to a couple of men who were eating outside the drive-in. They appeared to understand what I said, the kidnaper became angry when he saw them looking at me. He slapped me hard and told me to shut up or he would kill me right there.” She had seen the name of the drive-In restaurant and told the police.
A canvas of the neighbors where the drug supplier was found turned up one person who reported that she had seen a truck pull into the driveway of the victims’ house. She had also noted 2 men getting out of the truck but didn’t notice anything else about them. She didn’t take note of the license number and couldn’t even remember the color. If any other neighbors have seen anything, they were not talking. The neighbors told them that there were lots of traffic coming and going to that house at all hours of the day and night. The bad guy had a nasty dent in the top of his head that appeared to be the cause of death. The medical examiner confirmed that suspicion. The crime scene investigators didn’t come up with any fingerprints other than the kidnapped girl and the victim. The murder weapon was not found. From the wound, the investigators figured it was a pipe or maybe a tire iron.
Underworld informants had told him that there was a lot of money in the house that was supposed to be picked up later that afternoon. Pressure was high to find the person who had stolen “their money.” Some known drug people had disappeared. Rizzo was in favor of drug wars. He felt that drug people shooting each other was a good thing. The only problem he could see was when innocent people sometimes got in the middle when drug people were shooting at each other.
The only clue to the murder that he had was 2 guys at the house getting out of a truck, and the 2 guys eating outside the drive-in restaurant. He assumed they were the same 2 people. How many people eat hamburgers and drive a truck! He talked to the employees who were working at that time in the drive-in restaurant. They all spoke broken English and couldn’t or wouldn’t help him. ‘Help me, hell, they were probably all illegal aliens and were scared to even talk to me! If they remembered anything they were sure not going to tell me!’
The kidnapped girl was returned to her family to the accompaniment of a joyous celebration. To the newspaper reporter she publicly thanked the Salt Lake City Police but most of all she was grateful to the wonderful Good Samaritans who she believes saved her life. She also told reporters that there was a lot of money on the table that her rescuers must have taken. Her parents echoed the thanks and said that perhaps instead of a Good Samaritan, it was in fact more like Robin Hood. The newspaper and TV reporters picked up on the Robin Hood idea, and for a few days everyone was talking about Robin Hood vs. the Kidnapper.
Rizzo thought, ‘I wonder what our good friend Cole was doing at the time all this happened?’ He cut out the newspaper story of the ROBIN HOOD VS THE KIDNAPPER incident, and put it in the unmarked file in the back of his file cabinet. ‘Officially I have no reason to connect Cole with this incident, and as happens quite often lately, the good guys win another battle. I don’t have time to spend trying to solve a murder that on the surface involves drug people killing each other, so CASE UNSOLVED-DEAD FILE. I am a little concerned about the newspaper stories glorifying the ROBIN HOOD angle, and not sure where that will lead.’
MARTIAL ARTS
“I don’t think that we should go to our favorite hamburger restaurant for awhile. That is the only connection that I can think of between us and the death of the rabid dog,” said Cole to Aaron. Cole had called Aaron at work after the news story about Robin Hood being alive and well in Salt Lake City. They agreed to meet at a different drive-in restaurant. After getting their order, they got in Jan’s car.
“Why are you driving Jan’s car,” asked Aaron?
“I’m probably getting paranoid. I just thought that I should leave my truck home for awhile. Someone could have seen it parked in that guy’s driveway. Maybe we should back off for awhile.”
“I guess we could do that. We haven’t been out looking for damsels in distress. We have just helped them when we had the opportunity. Did you listen to the radio today?”
“No, I don’t generally listen to anything except my music while I’m driving to work.”
Aaron continued, “It seems that a policeman was arrested for abusing his wife. He was beating her up. He locked her up and cut the telephone lines so that she couldn’t call for help. I don’t remember how the word got out, but the policeman is on paid leave until the department can sort it out.”
“I don’t know about you, but I think we had better stay away from that one. It just occurred to me that it would probably be a good idea if we took some self defense classes at the gym and maybe get a concealed weapon permit.”
“Are you serious”, Aaron questioned?
“Why not, I don’t know about you but I’ve never done much fighting and in our new part time job of being Robin Hood, it might come in handy if I knew more about how to fight and defend myself. I checked at the gym the other day and there is a beginning level class for some Korean martial arts classes called TAE KWON DO starting next week. I signed us up.”
“You signed me up too,” whined Aaron?
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want too; there’s no cost for the first 5 beginning lessons. Then it’s only $15 per lesson. The lessons are twice per week, on Monday and Thursday nights at 7 PM. First class is tomorrow night. Are you going to go?”
“I guess I could at least try it, especially if it’s free,” said Aaron.
Cole changed the subject, “any thoughts about the money in my storage unit?”
“We’ve only had the drug money for a couple of days, no, I haven’t really thought about it.”
“My family has a corporation. The corporation owns some stock that earns a little money and pays us some dividends each year. It’s just enough to pay the annual corporate registration and buy us dinner. I could put a little of the money each month in the corporation and put it to work. I know some really great investment strategies that could multiply the investment. If it doesn’t work, what have we lost?”
“It scares me to think of doing anything with that money.”
“Look at it this way; if the bad guys find us and the money, we are going to be just as dead whether they recover all of it, or none of it.”
“Well that’s a comforting thought,” snorted Aaron!
“It isn’t like we are going out and buying new cars, houses, or suddenly changing our standard of living. I’m talking about taking maybe $1,000 per month and putting it in the Corporation. That’s an amount that Jan and I could easily do now, especially since she has sold the house. We have some time to reinvest the money that we received in a new house to delay the income taxes, so in the meantime, a little slipped into the corporation shouldn’t raise any flags even if somebody was watching. But you’re probably right; I won’t pull any money out of the storage unit for now, does that make you feel better?”
“Completely, have you destroyed the briefcase yet?”
“I plan on going over there this weekend and making the switch. I have some duffle bags in storage already. So I’ll go in the storage unit, rip the briefcase up and come out with a box full of scraps. I’ll then burn the scraps in our back yard fireplace. When the fire has cooled, I’ll clean out the ashes, including the briefcase hardware, and drop them into a dumpster somewhere.”
“Sounds like a plan. Same time, same place tomorrow?”
The next 4 months were busy and flew by quickly. In that time both Cole and Aaron learned a lot in the TAE KWON DO classes. They graduated from the beginning class and started the next level. It was quickly apparent to both of them that their skill in attacking someone or defending themselves was almost non-existent. They were getting more confident each week. The bruises and sore muscles marked their progress. They each had also applied for a concealed weapon permit. They expected to receive the approval letter soon.
Detective Rizzo received a report of all concealed weapon permit applications. He noted the ones from Cole Taylor and Aaron Johnson. He laughed out loud but not loud enough to be heard outside his office, ‘Now you guys are getting a concealed weapon permit. You were doing pretty well without a concealed weapon! Hey there Cole Taylor and Aaron Johnson, I can hardly wait to see what happens next.’
More time passed with Cole and Aaron learning how to protect themselves with all kinds of weapons, but mostly with their hands and feet. They had not realized just how dangerous a person can be if that person understands what to do and how to do it.
They had received their concealed weapon permit. The bag of pistols and knives that they had liberated from the dead drug dealer contained three 9 MM Rugers. They each took one of the 9 MMs. In addition Aaron bought a 38 Smith & Wesson revolver for the girls to shoot. The girls thought it was great fun to go with them to practice shooting. They went through a lot of ammunition and made a lot of noise. Cole and Aaron were getting better, but still had a long way to go before they would be classified as expert. Just to be able to consistently hit a 4 inch circle was the immediate goal. The surprising thing was that of the 2 couples, Jan was the best shot. That statistic could change but for the time being, Cole and Aaron had to bow to the weaker sex. Jan consistently won 7 out of 10 times.
“It’s embarrassing, said Aaron to Cole. Your wife is a better shot than either of us.”
“I think it’s kind of cool, I’m going to help her get a permit and a smaller pistol. I’ll bet that she will be even better with a smaller caliber. How about Rachel, is she interested in having her own gun?”
“Probably, as long as we are all going shooting on a regular basis, she is going to want one. She will insist, especially if Jan gets one. Actually, I would feel better about her being at home alone if she had a gun handy.”
Monday, March 15, 2010
Chapter Five
WIFE BEATER
Aaron and Rachel were married in a church in
“Picking up on what you were saying before your engagement and wedding, yes, I have some more plans. Are you and your new bride settled in enough to think about anything besides your new wife and work?”
Aaron almost shouted, but realized where they were sitting “I have been thinking a lot about what has happened over the last year. My life has really changed. What plans are you talking about?”
“A story came across my desk yesterday. It’s about a guy in
“Ok, what else?”
“The TV news had a picture of him as the police took him away. I’ve seen him camped next to where we go hunting. He’s an arrogant drunken slob. He is one of those hunters who take a rifle and a case of beer to go hunting. They party all night and then go hunting with a hangover. I was just thinking that if he shows up hunting where we camp again this year, we could arrange an accident to happen and that would be a good thing.”
“Are you suggesting shooting him,” asked Aaron incredulously?
“No the anti-hunting wackos don’t need any more hunters shot while hunting. I was thinking more of maybe a fall on his knife, or off of a cliff, or into a river? How about going hunting with us?”
“That’s a problem. My family and I are going hunting in a different area.”
“OK, I’ll play it by ear and see if the opportunity presents itself, if not we can work out something when we get back after the hunt.”
Cole and his brother, Ted, were camped in their regular spot. Hunting season started the next day. They were sitting by the fire enjoying the crackling fire and their companionship. They were talking about their plans for the next day when a truck pulled into the campground. It was the wife beater from
“Talk about how to ruin a good hunting trip,” said Ted.
“These are the kind of jerks that give hunting a bad name. They are the same bunch that was here last year. They’ll be stinking drunk tonight, sleep in tomorrow morning and miss the best time to be hunting…first light on opening day. I don’t think they care. It’s all about getting drunk, going out in the forest, getting drunk, carrying a high powered rifle and getting drunk. They probably wouldn’t know what to do with a deer if they shot one.”
The wife beater and friends were busy setting up camp; however they didn’t set up a tent. They pulled out some folding chairs, sleeping bags, cases of beer, a can of gas, some wood and settled down for some hard drinking. One of them threw some wood in the fire pit, poured some gas on it and threw a match. The explosion must have singed the wife beater’s hair, because he was yelling something at the one who threw the match. The other guy was having a wonderful time. Soon all were laughing and throwing can after empty beer can on the blazing fire.
Cole noted where the wife beater placed his sleeping bag. It was the farthest from the fire. An idea was germinating in his mind. They couldn’t hear most of what was being said in the wife beaters camp, but one of them said something, threw another empty can in the fire, and collapsed on his sleeping bag. The other 2 seemed dazed and followed suit. Wife beater got back up and walked into the trees. They could hear the sounds of the wife beater relieving himself. He then staggered back in the firelight and collapsed on the sleeping bag.
“Looks like the show is over, I think that I’ll turn in,” said Ted.
“Will you leave the door unzipped; I need to go take a leak. I’ll make sure the fire is out and join you.”
“Sure thing” as Ted unzipped the tent, and in just a few minutes was making those snorts and sawing noises that he was famous for.
Cole watched the fire burn itself out in wife beaters camp. When he was sure that Ted was asleep, he walked over to the wife beaters camp. The moon was putting out enough light to see almost as clearly as day. The 3 men were all completely out of it. Cole took a look around. These guys were all in a drunken stupor. ‘This opportunity may not come again,’ he whispered to himself. It was as if someone whispered in his ear and he repeated it out loud.
The wife beater was half way in his bag, laying face up, snoring loudly. His pillow was near by. Two unopened cases of beer were beside their truck. An open case was next to the fire pit. A couple of empty cases had been thrown on some nearby bushes. The fire was still smoking. Cole could not see any lights or other movement around the camping area or coming up the road.
Cole made his decision. He slipped his gloves on, took the pillow, and straddled the sleeping wife beater, sat down on his chest with his legs holding down his arms. He then quickly placed the pillow over wife beater’s mouth and pushed down as hard as he could. The wife beater struggled, but his legs were pinned in the sleeping bag, his arms were pinned by the weight of Cole and he couldn’t breath. Wife beater started to vomit as he suffocated. It was over in a minute or two. Cole got up and turned the pillow just enough to see that it was smeared with wife beaters vomit. He then grabbed a can of beer and poured it into wife beater’s open mouth, dumped the rest all over him, and forced the empty can into his right hand. He rolled wife beater face down on the pillow where it was smeared with vomit. He took a branch and brushed the ground where he had walked all the way back to the tent to erase his footprints. Then he went into the tent and crawled into his sleeping bag.
It was a long night for Cole. ‘What have I become? How can I, a law abiding, religious person kill like that? I have a new wife that I love more than life itself. I am risking everything I have killing this vermin. Tomorrow may turn nasty, a drunken hunter choking on his vomit and dying right next to our camp. If we had the same police investigators, it could be a problem. Not likely, this is in a different county.’ He thought of Jan and what she had went through in the past and how much he missed her. He thought about how he felt each time he made the decision to put a rabid dog out of its misery. ‘I feel like I could pick up my pickup with one hand each time I kill one of those slime buckets.’
The alarm went off just as Cole was drifting off to sleep. Their plans were to eat some energy bars, put on their hunting backpacks, and take their rifles up the trail to their favorite hunting spots. At first light, both Cole and Ted were standing exactly where they wanted to be. Cole had gone up the trail about a mile and then went up the canyon to the right; Ted had hiked to the left. Their rifles spoke almost at the same instant as both had spotted a nice 4 point buck foraging in the sagebrush as shooting light materialized. Both went over to their trophies to make sure the prime bucks were indeed dead.
“Was that you shooting,” came the question out of Cole’s radio?
“Yes, but I heard another shot, was that you?”
“Yep, I got a nice 4 point, how about you?”
“Me too, I’ll call you when I’m done field dressing it.”
An hour and a half later “I’m finished for now, how about you” blared the radio to Cole?
“I’ll be done in a shake. This old boy is too big to carry in one trip. I’m cutting him in half so I can take him down to the truck in 2 trips.”
“See you there,” said Cole.
One hour later, Cole and Ted were walking into the camp. Cole was carrying the head and front shoulders of his buck while Ted was carrying the hind quarters of his. A game warden was sitting there and there was no sign of the wife beaters camp.
The game warden looked like he had stepped direct from the Game Warden Fashion magazine. Not a hair was out of place. His pants and shirts had the military press look. He stood about 5 feet 5 inches tall in his elevator shoes and Cole’s first impression was ‘this guy has a bad case of Small Man Disease. It’s a fairly common disease for game wardens’
The game warden glared at Cole and Ted. He was sitting on the side of his truck. This effectively put him above 6 foot 4 inch tall Cole. He finally barked an order, “Put that animal on the tailgate where I can see it! “A nice animal, too bad for you I don’t see a tag on it!”
Cole showed him his license and the tag that had been placed on the horns of his buck.
Ted pulled out his license to show the game warden, but before he could say that his tag was on the horns of his deer, the game warden, visible disappointed that he couldn’t give them a heavy fine, unhappily said “good enough, did you know the people that were camped beside you?”
“No, they came in after we did last night,” volunteered Ted.
Cole said, “What happened to them, they were here when we left this morning?”
“Let me ask the questions! One of them died overnight. It looked like he vomited in his sleep and suffocated. When the others woke up they saw he was dead and called the sheriff’s office. Since I was closer, I came on over. The sheriff and ambulance just left. The rest of the party went out with him. I told the sheriff that I would get your identification in case he had any questions for you. How long will you be here?”
Cole said, “We’ll be leaving today. It’s too hot to hang the deer very long so we’ll need to take it home to process it.”
With that the game warden sat there glaring at them until they walked back to their camp, he then quickly jumped down and ran to the front door, got in his truck and left.
Cole watched him leave. “I haven’t seen a game warden that bad since the one we ran into 3 or 4 years ago. I wonder if it’s the same guy.”
“Probably is. How many of them could there be around like that. Do you believe those drunken idiots that were parked beside us last night? It doesn’t surprise me that one of them drank so much he died. I guess it serves him right! I can’t believe it, right beside us, a drunk died, I can’t believe it,” repeated Ted.
“Let’s hang the deer, rest for a little bit, have lunch, and hike back to get the other halves of our deer.”
It was almost dark when they finally arrived back to camp. This time there was a sheriff sitting there watching while 3 others were picking up stuff from the clearing where wife beater and friends had been camped. Obviously they were doing a crime scene scan seeing if there was any evidence of wrongdoing.
“Wondered where you guys were” said the sheriff. The game warden told me that you had a big buck, and I see it there hanging in the trees, but he didn’t tell me that you had 2 big bucks.”
“He assumed that we had got one deer and brought it in, while in fact we each had got one and brought in different halves. He didn’t ask if we had another deer back in the hills someplace, so we didn’t volunteer the information. I don’t want to be disrespectful, but some game wardens are arrogant pricks,” said Cole!
When the Sheriff quit laughing he said “you sure called that one right. This game warden is the worst that I’ve seen. He’ll be really pissed off when I ask him why he didn’t check both big bucks. I guess that I need to check both of your licenses and tags while I’m here.”
“Not a problem” said Ted as he pulled out his license and pointed out the tag on his buck’s horns. Cole did the same.
“Now about the guy that died last night, either of you know any of the group that was here?”
“No, like we told the game warden, we were camped here, 3 guys drove in about dusk, got out, proceeded to make a lot of noise and appeared to get stinking drunk and went to bed. We couldn’t get any sleep until it quieted down” reported Cole.
“Did you hear any strange or unusual noises during the night?”
“I heard a lot strange, weird snoring noises from my brother here and from over that direction, but nothing really unusual,” said Cole as he pointed to where wife beaters group had been parked.
“I didn’t hear anything”, said Ted.
“You make so much noise, I’m not surprised,” said Cole to Ted.
“The game warden gave me your names and phone numbers. I’ll be in touch if I need anything else. We’re out of here as soon as the investigation team finishes.”
Cole and Ted broke camp, loaded all the camping equipment and put the 2 identical deer racks on top, tied them down, and headed for home.
SHERIFF BRENT CALL
The TV news reporter with the standard anti-hunting agenda said “A deer hunter needlessly dies in the mountains east of Nephi. Sheriff Brent Call reports that it appears he died of natural causes. The case is under investigation. Final determination is awaiting autopsy report. Identification withheld until next of kin are notified.”
The newspaper did a front page story, again with an anti-hunting message, “Saturday a young man in the prime of life needlessly died in the mountains near
“Neither report told the true story. The young man and his 2 companions partied for hours drinking one beer after another until they collapsed in a drunken stupor. Maybe we should call the newspaper to tell them this piece of information,” said Ted. He and Cole talked about the standard news slant against anything to do with hunting, guns, or anything having to do with conservative values. Even in
Jan asked Cole, “Did you see the report about the deer hunter who died? Was it close to where you and Ted were hunting?”
“Yes real close, in fact it was right next to us in the campground. These guys came in after we set up camp. They drank themselves into a stupor, but were real quiet when we left to go hunting an hour before first light. When we came back to camp with our deer, these guys were gone and the law enforcement people were there. It sounded like the guy that died, drank so much beer that he passed out, vomited and choked to death.” He skipped a few details like a pillow that stopped the wife beater from breathing.
Jan gave Cole a weird look, but seemed to accept his story and went on to tell Cole about the cute things Billy was doing. “He talks a mile a minute. I just wish he would learn to speak our language! A few words now and then are understandable, it’s so funny.”
Detective Rizzo pulled out his unmarked file folder. The news report about the wife beater in
Sheriff Call looked over the report from the coroner.
CAUSE OF DEATH-asphyxiation caused by stomach contents obstructing the victims’ airway. Blood alcohol content was 1.6%.
He printed accidental death in his report. He wondered about the hunters who were camped next to this dead hunter. Something seemed a little out of place. ‘Were they telling him everything?’ He had a copy of the file on the dead guy showing that he was a criminal who abused his family on a regular basis. The hunters, Cole and Ted Taylor seemed like good upstanding citizens. ‘As far as I’m concerned this CASE IS CLOSED. One more rotten apple in the trash.’
Cole and Aaron were having lunch the next week, “tell me about it”, said Aaron. “I saw the news report about some poor guy who died while hunting.”
Cole told him exactly what happened.
Aaron said, “Wow, we, especially you, are really getting good at this. I’m sorry that I missed it.”
“It’s funny; I was waiting around to see if circumstances would develop where I could do my good deed, when everything just fell into place. It’s almost like some higher power is seeing to it that we take these human parasites out of their misery, or maybe we’re answering the prayers of those poor women who are being abused. I realize that we’re taking a terrible chance every time we do it, but it’s like killing a rabid dog. These human scum bags deserve to die.”
“What now?”
“Well,” said Cole, “I guess we keep watching for the next rabid dog that needs to be put out of its misery. How was your hunting trip?”
“We had a great time. Unlike you we didn’t have to work our butts off carrying body parts of some animal back to camp. We didn’t get a shot. We saw lots of does but nothing with horns. We didn’t see anything to shoot at, but enjoyed every minute of it.”
“Did you have any drunken slobs camped next to you?”
“Absolutely not, it was great.”
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