Chapter 17. Murder on `The Way.'
The week after Joe left I participated in an Op in far northwest Spain, an area State told me I'd never go (because it was someone else's territory (Paris France embassy)). That famous town Santiago de Compostela and the large church: Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela, it's the western terminus of the famous pilgrimage-walk called The Way of Saint James*. There are reports of someone robbing and killing people on the walk as they arrive in towns near the end of the hike. They are snatched at night and robbed, then killed and dumped in the fields outside of town. The local cops cannot handle the investigation due to the increasing number of people taking the hike, which used to number a few hundred a year and is now approaching half a million pilgrims a year. You bring in that much money and tourists and the sickos are also attracted. I accepted the assignment and agreed to work with a new State Department FCA, like myself. He was a retired cop from New Mexico and had the exact same training as me. They estimated it would take us 2-3 weeks to locate the perp(s).
(* The Way of St James is known by several very different names and takes many different routes, but they all end at the same place.) Because I am lazy I will refer to the city where the hike ends from here on as: `Santiago de...'
We were scheduled to stay at a bed and breakfast in a town along the route. My temporary partner was named Roberto Rodriguez, he was supposed to meet me at the train station in Santiago de... then we will drive to a bed and breakfast in another town. This B&B has been used by State, the INR, and CIA in the past, our government has an account there and the place was scanned for listening devices and has been electronically clean for over a decade. I was able to download an employee badge photo of Roberto. Our meeting is in three days, I'll take the train from Tarifa to Madrid then over to Santiago de ..., the train ride will take about two days so I got a sleeper. And since it's in Spain it is like home country for us so I am bringing a pistol, a few spray cans, and a knife. State has a very cozy relationship with the government in Spain, so for us it's similar to operating inside the USA.
The first ferry across the strait was 5:30am tomorrow, I was packed and ready when I went to bed.
The car ferry to the harbor at Tarifa is not one I've used a lot because its train station is small and sits at the end of the line. The place is run down (like most of Spain) and has lousy seating, like old rock-hard church pews.
The train left twenty minutes late but I got my sleeper as arranged by the embassy in Madrid. The FCA I'm meeting is stationed there. I think I went to the Madrid embassy once a couple years ago for something. I don't even remember what the campus looked like.
I got out my computer to review the areas where the people disappeared along The Way, I was looking for anything that stood out as being evidence. I used GMaps since the entire Way has been done in Streetview from the starting towns in France, called the French Way. The Way has lots of starting point choices, some in France, some in Spain; you are free to choose yours. The most popular starting point today is in the French coastal city of Arles, which is near Marseille. That route is about 700 miles long, plan on 2-3 months of good weather to reach the end.
The way it works is you pay a fee and are handed a blank passport.' As you follow that route you stop at the stations and have your passport stamped. These stamps filling in your passport are your proof that you completed the hike, so you can show your friends. Otherwise the passport has no value, just emotional attachment. (for more info see the 2010 movie The Way' with Martin Sheen)
I took a sleeping pill and slept until we arrived in Madrid, then our sleeper car got changed to another train but I could stay in my sleeper cabin, they moved cars around. Five hours later we left Madrid and I fell asleep again. There is something I really like about sleeping on a train. The rocking motion and monotonous train sound helps a lot of people sleep better.
We arrived at 10:25pm on the second day at the train station near downtown Santiago de Compostela. The old quarter of the city is mostly all red brick buildings with ceramic tile roofs.
I finally stepped down out of the sleeper car, wide awake at 10:30pm. Then I walked in the same direction as everyone else. We all walked down the platform toward the train station, which was very small. Outside the station on the sidewalk I made eye contact with a guy standing alone watching people exit the building, he resembled the photo of Roberto so I made eye contact and he gestured for me to join him.
I walked up and told him I was Alex, he said I looked like my badge photo, I laughed but didn't repeat the same thing back to him. We shook hands and walked to the parking lot and got in a small Euro size diesel car. I swear the inside of that car was smaller than the cockpit of a Cessna 172. I think the car was some kind of Fiat.
I asked him if he had to get a pilot license too and he said no. So I quizzed him about his history and he said he retired early from the police force in Albuquerque after the city started discussing replacing the police with teams of unarmed social workers. He said it was a forced retirement. Then he got hired by State. So I told him my story and about my former partner and best friend.
We had a discussion how to get to the bed and breakfast. He called the place and said they were waiting on our arrival, it took 49 minutes to get there using the GPS in the tiny town of Outeiro Spain, one block off theN547 highway. To see the place do a gmaps search for: `Pension Mirador de Rouris' the B&B is about 200 feet east at the T-intersection.
We were told the story about the missing hikers was suppressed in the local media to not interfere with our investigation. We were also given the police reports for each corpse found outside of town in the fields, all killed the same way.
The victims were usually under the age of 40, walking alone, with designer backpacks and high grade shoes and hiking poles. They all entered the city via the same route and stopped at the first place that showed the shell logo of The Way, it identified them as a supporter of hikers, a place to stop for supplies. But it was just a small mom and pop convenience store open 24 hours a day.
Some of the local people are very upset that the number of pilgrims walking The Way has increased dramatically over the past ten years; it may have caused the local police to feel the killings were unfortunate but not a huge matter. Perhaps they did not investigate too closely, or perhaps their investigation uncovered some inconvenient truths about the perp(s). I felt it was likely the perp was just a local resident known to many.
After we got into the assigned room in the B&B we got connected to the internet and spent an hour discussing the coroner and police reports of the first two corpses discovered by farmers on their fields.
They were able to come up with a timeframe of 48 hours when death occurred. The mechanism of death was a rope around the neck, strangulation with wrists tied behind the back, ankles tied, and evidence of severe blows to the face and chest, probably fist punches, probably killed by men. Both of the first two were killed the same way and dumped near each other, two years ago. Since both bodies were mostly submerged most of the external evidence was destroyed, like DNA and fingerprints.
I was exhausted and struggling to keep my eyes open so we turned-in. We slept in separate twin beds. The accommodations were not fancy but the room was spotless and it was charged to State directly.
Our alarms went off at the same time, 0600 for the included breakfast in the small dining room. We enjoyed coffee, eggs any way, toast, bacon, non-fermented grape juice, cottage cheese, and sliced fruit. The B&B owners boasted the eggs were from their own chickens and the bread was from wheat they grew on the farm and they baked their own bread too. I got stuffed! After breakfast we returned to our room to complete our review/discussion of the cases.
So this B&B was an old farm. They renovated the barn and turned it into five small rooms, each one with a small private bath. Our room was the one usually reserved for G-men, which was why it had two twin beds and a sofa bed. Under the same roof they had a dining room with a large wood table and seating for twelve. Breakfast was served off a very nice buffet line maintained by the owner and his wife.
They built a covered walkway between the house and the barn, and outside the barn at the far end of the hallway was an outdoor patio with nice wood furniture and a fantastic view overlooking the entire valley and a gazillion acres of farmed and grazed land. It was totally picturesque. It reminded me of scenes from the 1944 movie `Passage to Marseille,' when the news correspondent arrived at a French bomber airbase disguised as farmland during the day when the German observation planes flew over taking photos. The view from the patio almost looked too picturesque to be real.
We worked on notes until 11am then decided to drive to the first two corpse locations, which were only two miles away. We could take photos and look for evidence and maybe talk to locals. Let me tell you to never be in a rush while driving in this part of Spain because the roads in these tiny old towns are usually one lane and suddenly end in someone's parking spot. On both sides of the streets are often very old mortar and field stone walls, and few roads have signs, speed limits, directions, or anything except farm fields, trees, and ditches. Many of these towns are 15 old homes with dirt floors, outhouses, and maybe a bar or a tiny market. On the plus side outside of war most of these towns have never had a crime occur in their 300 year histories, except maybe that one time 210 years ago when one farmer was accused of stealing a chicken from another farmer.
With GPS assistance we arrived at a spot on a dirt road between two farm parcels. Beside the road were three foot deep drainage ditches, each one had about five inches of ice cold muddy water in the bottom. There were places where tractors crossed from the road to the fields. With the help of case photos we located the exact spot for the first two corpses, they were found a week apart and were dumped about two hundred feet apart. We mostly stayed on the road but Roberto saw something and carefully slid down into the ditch and got his shoes full of muddy water and mud smears on his slacks, but he found some personal items: a pocket knife, a left shoe, and some kind of key.
While we were rinsing mud off the items a farm tractor drove up. At first the old man on the tractor was hostile saying we had to leave. We flashed our badges and told him we were investigating the murders and we were not with the local police, we were from the USA. The old man seemed stunned that someone from North America even cared about local farmers so we told him we were trying to catch the killer. I asked if he had any information about the two cases and he reached down and shut off his tractor and climbed down and joined us looking at the muddy items on the hood of the rental car.
The old man had a lot to say, I started recording him with my cell but he didn't seem to care.
Basically what he said was the police had no interest in anything the locals had to say, they were the experts and the farmers should shut up, so we asked what he knew. He pointed to a farm house across the field and said his wife saw the murder. Their kitchen window faced the fields and she was doing dishes and saw them stop and get in a physical struggle with something they pulled out of the back of a truck and looked like two men strangled someone or something on the ground then rolled it into the ditch and left. They drove past their house and she looked out the front door and got a partial license plate. He said the part she saw was `1566' but she could not see the first few characters.
We asked if they reported it to the cops and he said yes, but said none of them wrote it down.
"What police force investigated this crime scene?" I asked.
The old man said it was state police, not local cops. I asked what state this was and he said "This is Lugo, the main city is Lugo, its 35 miles northeast of here on Highway N547." He pointed to the east with a proud smile. We asked what else he knew. The guy said we should come to his house, so we followed him after he carefully turned his tractor around on the narrow road. We parked outside the dilapidated farm house with the tin roof. Chickens were running around outside and a few cawed as we tried not to step on any chicks running around the yard in search of juicy bugs to eat.
We went inside to a tiny kitchen, their faucet at the sink was a hand pumped thing probably right on top of the well pipe! They had an old steel shower stall in the kitchen. The house was small, maybe three rooms and I was sure they still used an outhouse. He came back to the kitchen with a worn brown paper sack and handed it to Roberto since he did most of the talking.
He opened the bag and carefully poured the contents on the kitchen table. Everything was partially covered with mud. We found a pair of prescription glasses, some coins, a hair comb, a scallop shell that had the name of someone drawn in magic marker, and a right shoe that matched the one we just found.
He let us photograph everything, especially the shell. Written on the shell it said: Tabatha 129944-14.
We thanked him and drove back to town after looking at the other location where a body was dumped in a ditch along the same road.
The nearest office of The Way was in Santiago de ... so we drove back near the train station and asked them to look in their records for `Tabatha 129944' and got a name and address: Tabatha Simons, 1455 East Side Street, Albuquerque, NM. Roberto was thrilled and made his first call back to the states to his former boss to get contact information. Within ten minutes Roberto was talking to her on the phone, she was home taking care of her two year old daughter. Using the speaker phone we congratulated her and asked about The Way and the people she walked with.
She said she met a man from France soon after they started the hike. The two of them paired-up but he disappeared in the final days of The Way. We got his name and information. She said they became such good friends they exchanged addresses but he never contacted her again. She said her daughter might be his child. We wrote down everything she said and explained we were investigating two murders along The Way and might have located his corpse and now we were looking for the killer.
She suggested there was a very odd man with a local Spain accent. He said he was hiking the way but she didn't believe him because he spoke like a local guy and nobody along the route takes the hike. The locals dislike the hikers because they supposedly spread sickness, trash, and clog up all the local stores and churches, and deplete local town governments of emergency funds and never replace it. She said the locals all think the people on The Way just take and take and give nothing in return, she said The Way should be renamed: MY WAY ALONG YOUR HIGHWAY!
We talked for about 14 minutes then got off the call, Roberto said a 14 minute call from Spain to New Mexico would be super expensive! I told him State would pay. I never told him about my satellite phone in my suitcase back at the B&B.
We drove back to the B&B and got there at 2:15pm after a very long day. Most of the information about the local guy we got was he wore a sweat shirt that said Lugo Farm Supply, and on the front it said Javier.
We drove to Lugo since it was only 35 miles away and got there before the farm store closed. The store appeared on our GPS, it was a very nice, modern farm store that sold stuff for chickens, horses, pigs, cattle, and parts to repair tractors and field equipment. Outside they had a tractor repair shop, so we walked back there and asked how long the wait was to bring in a flat tire mounted on a 16 inch rim, the guy said tomorrow before lunch, maybe 1-2 hours. His work shirt said Javier. I managed to grab his photo and we left the shop and looked around and probably identified employee parking and took photos of every vehicle (and license plate) in the lot, it was ten cars and trucks. One of the trucks was an old Toyota truck with a license plate: NHG1566, it was a partial match according to one witness.
We considered driving to the state police office but felt it would end in hostility so we went back to the B&B and used his State computer's access to the EU database and identified all the people working at the farm supply shop, one was named Javier Jorge. We got his address and looked up if he had any convictions or police encounters. We found he was named on a list of people associated with a nationalist group known for being extreme and were often rather anti-tourist, and spoke out against The Way. He was delinquent on his taxes, and he was arrested for DUI twice and was out of jail on work-release. He was divorced and delinquent on his child support payments.
Roberto said it looks like we identified a suspect. We discussed how to prove Javier's involvement and he said the same thing I was thinking: we go to his house that evening with beer and booze and knock on the door posing as friends and get him drinking and pretend to support his efforts, and see if he confessed and ID'd another suspect. If he confessed we tell him we were sympathetic and supported his actions, then tell him he stunk badly and spray his feet and his face. I agreed with his plan and we set a time for 8pm tonight. He lived in a small town called Azura, which was also along the route of The Way.
I quietly did more checking and found he had two children that lived with his ex-wife, also currently living in Azura, his kids were two boys, ages 17 and 14. The older son was working in town delivering hot food, and the younger one was still in school. I told Roberto and he came to the same possible conclusion, it was the oldest son who helped him commit the crimes, so we'd need to ask about him while we were talking to Javier.
We tried to take a few hour nap, I already had Javier's apartment programmed into the GPS, and the address of his ex-wife too.
We got up at 7pm and were soon on the road, its 18 miles to Azura from the B&B. It was super easy finding the apartment block, it was one block off the main road across town, and the place looked a bit old and run down. It almost looked like an old strip mall converted into tiny apartments. I suggested it was possibly welfare housing. We parked along the street within 100 feet of the suspect apartment.
Using my cell phone I surveyed the area for all operating cell phones and found one that matched his phone number that he gave to his employer. It was on but not moving, so I connected to it and activated the camera and microphone.
The camera must have been aimed at a table top but the mic played what sounded like TV audio and the sound of a person doing something in the apartment. We heard no dog sounds or sounds of a second person inside. Then a car drove up and parked near his truck, it had a pizza delivery sign on the roof. A male got out and knocked on the door, stood for a moment then the door opened and he walked in, then they closed the door. Roberto immediately suggested it might be his son. I asked if he had a pistol and he reached under his jacket and pulled out the exact same automatic pistol that I carried. I asked if he had cuffs and he said no. So I showed him my Velcro wrist straps. We decided to crash their pizza party.
Silently we crossed the parking lot, between the pizza car and Javier's truck and stood on either side of the door, like they taught us in Quantico. I had my pistol out, both of us were ready to shoot. I pointed to my eyes then at his pistol. We checked that safeties were off then I reached for the knob, the door was unlocked.
I knocked on the door and the older guy opened it with a smile. In Spanish Roberto introduced himself as a local organizing a protest against the hikers crossing their city. Would he be interested in joining the protest march at the city building on Saturday?
"Sure come inside." The old man gestured for us to come in so he could write down the date and time on paper. Once we got inside Roberto pulled his weapon and told the old man to sit back down on the sofa, then the other guy started to stand up but we ordered him to remain seated on the sofa and keep his hands visible and do not move. (No te muevas o te dispararemos.)
I walked to the refrigerator and grabbed two beer cans, opened them and carried them to the living room and set them on the coffee table in front of the sofa. The two men seated on the sofa looked puzzled, they were being held at gun point but we were also bringing them their own beers. Roberto told them to eat their pizza before it got cold, so each one leaned forward and grabbed another slice and ate them quickly, then two more, chased by guzzled beer. The young delivery guy had his hands on his head when our pistols were revealed and when Roberto told them to eat and drink they glanced at each other then in slow motion he leaned forward and slowly moved his hands from the top of his head to the pizza box. The young man said he didn't understand, (No entiendo qué está pasando aquí.)
Roberto and I stood near the TV and watched them eat more pizza and drink another whole can of beer, they both belched and we laughed. I reached down and shut off the TV because it was a distraction.
As a nice gesture Javier turned the box around and offered slices to us but we declined and kept telling them to drink. In my mind I saw them eating the last meal of their lives.
Javier finally asked (in Spanish): Does this have something to do with The Way of Saint James? (¿Tiene esto algo que ver con el Camino de Santiago?)
I nodded yes and gestured at his beer. Roberto pulled over two kitchen chairs and sat down. I went back to the kitchen and got them two more cold beer cans and opened them and set them on the table like the other ones. Roberto put his pistol back in his holster and suggested to both men to relax and prop their feet on the table and enjoy their dinner. I sat down in the chair beside Roberto but I kept my pistol on my lap.
We watched them finish the thin crust cheese and pepperoni pizza and each one drank two more beers. I asked the younger man if that was his father.
"Why do you want to know?"
"Because you two look like father and son."
He laughed and said, yes Javier was his father.
So I asked about The Way and the killings in town. They glanced at each other.
Javier set his beer down forcefully and started shouting that he was tired of all those nut-jobs walking through their town, wasting our money, and bringing nothing but trash and noise. He went on about how they ruin everything over time and do nothing positive for the communities along The Way.
I agreed with everything he said, which surprised both of them. Then the son joined in and started spouting hatred toward the hikers and how they're all crazy, the entire thing is nothing but a walking self-help therapy for depressed rich self-absorbed Americans, Dutch, and Belgians with herpes.
Roberto got right to the point and asked how many they've killed so far but the number they claimed was a bit higher than the official (but secret) police number we got from State.
Then they started explaining why they picked certain hikers to kill, the ones who tossed trash on the ground or stole things from other hikers. They did several final 18-mile hikes from their town to the church and that was how they selected their targets. Over time the hikers all warned others who to avoid because they stole from other hikers. With a careful look at Roberto he shrugged and nodded yes, we had multiple confessions, our mission was to kill these two if they confessed to multiple murders, and they clearly had. But while we listened we were never judgmental of them or disrespectful. They made it sound like we should be cheering them on, like Dexter only killing other serial killers.
I handed Roberto my spray can and we both stood. With pistols holstered we told them to remain seated with their feet resting on the coffee table on either side of the pizza box and close their eyes and hold both hands over their eyes. He stepped closer and sprayed each man twice, once on the feet, once at the nose. They both sniffed the air because of the nice lavender scent. Then we stepped back and told them to finish their beers, we sprayed their feet because, frankly, both of them had nasty smelling feet. He looked furious when I commented about his foot odor but the son laughed and grabbed his third beer can and guzzled it. Bottoms-up! He followed it with a rather loud and dramatic belch, I was impressed.
The younger guy asked what we sprayed, I told him it was a room deodorizer because their feet stunk like roadkill. I didn't know if they sold Lysol in Spain so I said deodorizer instead. I could tell complaining to them about stinky feet inside his own apartment was sort of stupid but it was all we could come up with quickly, but they seemed to believe it.
We said we had to leave and hoped to see them at the protest at the city building at 11am this Saturday, bring friends and sign the petition, help them make noise and let the rest of town know we were fed up with the constant stream of strangers walking along the side of our main street and dumping trash on the ground as they searched for salvation from the sky.
Then we left and walked out to the street and got in the rental car and drove away but never saw either of them follow us or even peek out the window. I felt they would sit there and try to figure out who we were. Since we left without arresting them I was certain they both felt relieved it was over and focused on the remaining beers in the refrigerator, and turn the fucking TV back on!
Half an hour later we returned to the B&B and decided we were both super hungry so we decided to leave again and drive across the town to a local bar where they served decent hot food.
We ordered a family-style spaghetti and meatballs with sides of green beans, garlic bread, and extra sauce for the pasta. Back in our B&B room I saw the portions were enormous. I swear that pasta had enough garlic and pepper on it to kill a Clydesdale. I was actually hoping to see a pizzeria in town after smelling it for the past half an hour, but we never saw one. I think their pizza came from the next down over.
We drank red wine and ate spaghetti and meatballs (two each, and they were nearly baseball size) and crunched on crusty garlic bread. During the meal both of us texted our supervisors and reported Mission Accomplished, home in 2-3 days.
The only way they'd have any more killings of hikers in that town was if it happened tonight, I doubted that would happen.
I took a taxi to Santiago de ..., Roberto said he wanted to stay another day because he loved the countryside in that part of Spain, he wanted to go see the huge cathedral where all the hikers ended their pilgrimage. I went to the station and got a ticket for the afternoon train to Madrid and a plane ticket to Tetouan. There are two different buses that run from Tetouan to Tangier, the commuter style bus only costs $4, but the big bus, like a Greyhound Bus costs $40 one way and gets there twice as fast. The cheap city bus with the plastic seats makes several stops along the way and sometimes smells like body odor.
I got back to my apartment by the beach at 10:55pm. I had multiple emails waiting from Jen and Dan. It felt good to be home. When I kicked off my shoes I considered how my feet might smell, so I sprayed inside my shoes and set them on the window sill.
The way the anthrax spray usually works, with those two guys getting sprayed directly in the nostrils I'm sure they got a big dose, but with Anthrax the trick isn't a big dose but one that implants spores deep in the lungs. We sprayed them in the evening about 8pm so by the next day in the afternoon I'm sure they were starting to forget about our little visit during pizza dinner. The idea was so they don't make a mental connection between the lavender spray and feeling a little sick the next day. Then when they seek medical attention neither of them would mention being sprayed by armed men at gunpoint, and the men spoke like Americans.
But the next day in the afternoon both men would feel a little sick, like they were coming down with a mild cold, maybe a cough too, maybe a minor sore throat and a low grade fever (99.9). They'd take some ibuprofen and hopefully go to bed and sleep it off. On day #3 they'd feel seriously sick. Pounding headache, body aches, big cough, wheezing, fever, sore throat, and no appetite. Maybe around lunch time on Day #3 they'd go to the Urgent Care for a breathing treatment, maybe a chest x-ray. If it showed in the chest x-ray (it doesn't always show) they might be told to drive to the hospital. Either way, around 6pm on day #3 they'd worsen rapidly into severe respiratory distress, maybe leading to intubation. By that time they were both in severe sepsis and their bodies would begin shutting down, dropping blood pressure, poor oxygenation despite being on a ventilator, then respiratory failure and cardiac arrest. Their last chest x-ray would have their lungs looking like two white blurry blocks of Swiss cheese.
Sometimes I felt weird about spraying people with anthrax. They had no idea, most never felt a thing, even when we sprayed their face. All they noticed was the pleasant lavender scent. They had no idea we just shot them with an invisible bullet that took 48 hours to kill. In their final hours they deteriorated quickly, their final hours were usually not pleasant. But on the plus side most of them were already unconscious when their heart stopped beating.
Inside the body our organs are designed to operate within a narrow range of pH and oxygenation. Septicemia screws it up so badly that all systems fail at the same time and the end comes quickly.
I don't know which would be better, to die 1-2 days after a gunshot and surgery, or septicemia. At least with anthrax you are practically guaranteed to die in your sleep, but your final waking hours will not be comfortable. Struggling to breathe is never fun. Imagine doing that with a fever of 103, a very sore throat, a pounding headache, chest pain, body aches, no appetite, extreme thirst, and vomiting blackened blood and bile.
I do think it's kind of funny that anthrax doesn't work on full-time sheep ranchers. That's why we also carry botulinum toxin in a tiny spray can.
Contact the author: borischenaz mailfence com
None of this story is real, it's a total fabrication, just for fun.