Just a reminder, this story is 100% fiction.
Chapter 22
One of our semi-annual requirement events was what we called touch-and-goes. We had to rent a Cessna 172, it was the same plane we used during flight schooling in but the Avionics were updated and now included the home-game version of ADSB, which was slowly replacing the old FAA airport radars. ELP used ADSB because of its proximity to the Army airbase (they were neighbors).
It cost hundreds to rent a plane, but the good part was they knew us well. The general aviation runway at ELP was in the far east side of the airport so there was a looong taxi out to the east end; it felt like we drove halfway to Carlsbad at 15mph with the big prop spinning in front of our windshield!
When every pilot got to the end of the taxiway they called for blastoff clearance, everyone sat there and stared at the Franklin Mountains dead ahead and considered ways to avoid doing the unthinkable. Luckily, ELP was not a hugely busy airport so the wait for clearance was never that long. But pilots also had to wait for air traffic at Biggs Airfield, and the several scattered airports around the area: Las Cruces, Holloman AFB, and any flight restrictions around the three missile ranges. You definitely did not want to grab the attention of a surface to air missile! The airspace above the missile ranges was regularly closed for missile testing; they ran from the TX/NM state line all the way up to forty miles north of Tularosa.
I drove first, David sat beside me. We took off towards the southwest and circled around downtown El Paso then flew above the border and lastly a big u-turn back to ELP and a soft touchdown on runway 26R. But this was 'touch and goes' so we flew the same route a few times and then landed and switched seats. David did a shorter loop, he turned south before we got to US-54 and down to I-10 and east above Montana Avenue then made the U-turn to the left to land on 26R. Within two hours both of us were up to date and we paid the bill and left. Since it was a sunny Sunday we drove down to Cattleman's for a big steak dinner then a leisurely drive home on I-10 on the west side to Transmountain Road.
Cattleman's was a big steak restaurant out in cattle country, southeast of El Paso near the town of Fabens Texas. You followed I-10 east to Fabens Road, exit 49, the sign says: FABENS. Exit the highway and turn left, cross over the interstate and keep going northish on San Filipe Road. The further you got from I-10 the more the terrain started to look like lumpy Chihuahua Desert, lumpy with bushes growing on top of the lumps. It's probably what El Paso County looked like before the Army arrived and built Fort Bliss (Bliss is someone's last name). The restaurant had a huge parking lot and was about five miles north of I-10 in the desert.
I think we were there for an hour, then came the fat belly walk outside to the truck feeling like we were pregnant. We both ordered the two-pound porterhouse, medium rare, with the intention of bringing over half of it home, along with sides. We also got corn on the cob, bread and butter, and beers. The only thing we didn't take home was beer. The Fabens turn off is about twenty-two miles southeast of Cielo Vista Mall. ---- Our home was quiet the rest of the day, since it was nice out we lounged in the pool and sort of chilled out. David said he was surprised he didn't sink his floating cushion because it felt like he had two pounds of beef in his belly.
On Monday morning David got a phone call from Nevada Congressman Clyde Grimm; we told him right away to call our office, but he insisted on asking us to help solve a missing person case. His personal secretary for his Washington DC office had disappeared a week ago with no evidence found to explain what happened to her. They'd hired a private investigator, but they worked the case for five days and found nothing; she simply vanished. He said someone from the Pentagon personally recommended he call David directly.
The congressman's story went like this:
His assistant was a young lady named Lydia from Reno Nevada, with a degree in political science and public speaking. She had been working for him for years and was the best manager he ever had. Fourteen days ago she requested one week of vacation time, then flew home to Reno to visit her mother. On the drive home the two stopped for dinner at a popular gambling themed restaurant in Reno. Lydia left the table to use the bathroom but never returned.
There weren't any witnesses or signs of a struggle or foul play, but the restaurant had zero working security cameras and it was very busy at the time she disappeared. Nobody came forward with witness reports. She walked to the bathroom and was never seen again. No ransom, no nothing. The congressman promised Lydia's family he would find out what happened. David told him this case was not within the scope of our service, but he offered to pay in cash for us to review the evidence, and to my surprise, David agreed. He said he would have the PI's documents copied and overnighted to us.
The UPS lady walked into our office at 10:46am with a large envelope and left it at the OD's desk. We sat in the conference room, just the two of us, and opened the package. I read it out loud while David sat at the secure computer terminal to do NSA/CIA/FBI searches on the fly.
It contained four pages of text with one page of diagrams with the floor plan for the restaurant and surrounding properties.
The report was printed on company letterhead: Smalls and Blick Private Investigators LLC. PO Box 108 Reno Nevada. Each sheet was letter headed, which also listed the Nevada PI license numbers for four partners. David typed them into the computer as I slowly spelled the names and within seconds he smiled and declared "They're good."
I read ahead down the first page. It said Congressmen Clyde Grimm just turned 49 years old and was divorced from his wife, the mother of their daughter (McKenzie, a high school senior). It was known in D.C. gossip circles that the congressman and his aide were in a relationship. The woman in question, the subject of the investigation was Lydia Ortiz, born and raised in Reno. She went to college in Las Vegas and graduated three years ago, she was currently 26 years old and was never married, never had any children. Her emergency contact was her mother, a divorced woman who owned two restaurants with slot machines in Reno. David mumbled that almost every business in Reno had slot machines, except the Baptist churches. Then I responded with, "Every gas station in El Paso sells lottery tickets, same thing." He just waved me on since I was wasting time.
He read from the screen: 'Lydia had no criminal history or history of substance abuse/addiction. She started volunteering for the Grimm re-election campaigns from her senior year of high school and also during the off semesters in college. After college she became the #2 person in the campaign and wrote the two of his campaign speeches. Political pollsters believed those speeches won him re-election. The congressman was not indicated as a possible suspect; he was recognized nationally as being one of the most respected and honest elected officials in Congress.'
I read more of the PI report out loud while David kept scanning for relevant facts. Our first search for Lydia displayed her birth records, childhood medical records, first bank accounts, college records, two parking tickets in Las Vegas and one speeding ticket on US-95 outside Tonopah Nevada, which was paid in cash the next day. She always carried insurance and never submitted any claims. She drove a 2014 Honda Civic, which she bought new with cash. Long story short, her records were unremarkable, her credit score was 811, and at first glance offered little information. She appeared to be as law abiding as the congressman.
Her records volunteering for the Grimm campaigns were not well documented, other than she went door to door for weeks in Reno, and during his 2nd campaign she started managing his calendar and wrote rough drafts for his speeches, based on what she heard voters talk about at town meetings in Reno; so his speeches were always on-point and up to date.
The disappearance happened seven days ago, she flew to Vegas, then to Reno. Her mother picked her up at the airport and headed for home. At the time many people said Lydia looked like the re-incarnation of comic actress Goldie Hawn from the 1960s comedy variety TV program Laugh-In.
Her mother was a similar sized woman, also with curly blonde hair, blue eyes, and a lovely warm personality. They stopped at a 24 hour restaurant called the Golden Spike Inn on 4th Street at Vine Street and got a booth for some privacy. According to her mother after drinks arrived they ordered dinner and Lydia got up to use the ladies room but never returned. Nobody reported seeing her walk out and their security camera at the front door was not working that night. The only other exit was near the bathrooms and had an alarm, which was later found to be inoperable. It was theorized she left via the fire exit door but has not been seen since. There were no reports of kidnappings from that restaurant since it opened in the 1950s. The business next door was a drive/walk-in wedding chapel, it had been closed and dark with no exterior camera operating at the time. That was the end of their investigation report. The summary was: no witness reports, no evidence of foul play, her cell number rang then went to voice mail and eventually stopped ringing.
The first thing we did was to obtain cell tower records for the entire Reno area including ones on I-80 heading east and west of town. We split up the investigation so we didn't duplicate our efforts. I quickly found her records from the time she landed in Reno and met her mother and they drove towards the University Town section of Reno, which was an upscale neighborhood on the northwest side, where her mother lived in a 4th floor condo but her lifestyle did not exceed her income according to IRS records.
While David searched her debit/credit card transactions I traced them crossing Reno to the restaurant then 45 minutes later she was on the move again, quickly. It showed her cell westbound on I-80 to Sacramento California where it exited the highway and exited at 14th Avenue and headed east one mile and stopped moving in an industrial area and has not moved since, but the signal vanished five days ago in that same area. We also made a list of all moving cell phones near the restaurant, in the hour she vanished, but that list was long.
The fastest way for us to get to Sacramento was a flight to LAX and a regional jet to Sacramento, which was what we did. Being at the El Paso airport when we decided to accept the case helped speed things up, it was possible time was a critical factor in this investigation. We also decided since this was not a formal job we'd wear civilian clothes, bring knives, cell phones, and David would carry his small backup pistol that he usually carried near his ankle. We'd both carry Fed ID cards to board planes with weapons. We would bring two spiders and one forearm terminal, but the pelican and Batsuit cases would stay at home.
The flight from ELP to LAX was usually 55-85 minutes depending on the jet stream. We got a connecting flight to Sacramento in one hour on a small airline that didn't take reservations, just pay ($40) cash and grab a seat on-board. SacAir flights departed every two hours from sunrise to sunset. We arrived in Sacramento at 3:11pm, got a rental car, and drove towards the industrial park where her signal was last recorded by a cell carrier.
We arrived at 4:42pm at the corner of R Street at 9th Street after most of the workers in that area had left for the day. I carried a tiny cell sniffer, which was not from our regular gear. I found it online from a place in China and ordered it myself. This was a small handheld box about the size of a pocket pager that displayed cell numbers, serial numbers, and signal strength. We let it sit on the roof of the car as we looked at all the buildings in the area. David walked around to do some sleuthing, while I watched for any sign of her cell emitting faint signals.
The information we got from the cell records actually narrowed down her cell phone location to one of two buildings but on arrival we saw they were joined by an indoor passageway, probably big enough for a forklift truck. The sign on the outside said Vertical Storage Systems Inc. Their logo showed warehouse shelving and fork trucks. I called our office to have the OD run a background check on the owner and look for connections to Reno, the victim, and the congressman.
David came back from his walk around the place; he had a telltale smile on his face. "It looks easy to get into, they have maintenance roof ladders on both buildings and the doors are all cheap; if we wanted to go inside." I picked up the cell scanner and scrolled down through the list but didn't find anything interesting.
"Does the place look empty?" I asked.
"The factory part does but I think some people're still in the office. I saw people through the smoked glass, but it's almost beer thirty." I looked at my watch, it was 5:24pm. Then I told him, "I'm waiting to get search results from the OD.""Good!" was his only reply. I think we both had ideas of things we'd do if it was us working at the OD desk.
There were so many different searches and comparisons we could run but we had to not overload the OD since they also had their regular duties.
Then he said he was going to walk down R Street to a hot dog place (on the corner of R at 7th) while I stayed by the rental car. He left and I drove the rental car into the employee parking lot beside the factory. It was a tall cement block building, maybe 150x150 white block, and tall, maybe forty feet to a flat roof. They had parking all the way around the building with two loading docks near the center of the wall. I walked to both ends and saw the roof ladders he spoke of but I started to have doubts she was here.
I thought about telling him what I wanted (hot dogs) but after being married so many years he should be able to get that right without asking.
I sat in the car and called the OD and asked them to do a new national cell database search for Lydia's number; 775-334-2226 was her number. I told them to try using wildcards, like 775-33x-22xx too. While she was searching I got to talk to the other OD and started to get my results.
Things the shelving company had in common with Lydia was their CFO went to the same college as Lydia, at the same time she was there. And he had an arrest record for aggravated sexual assault when he was 20 years old, he was the same age as Lydia, and was also from Reno but on the far east side, in Sparks Nevada. I got his cell number and current location and his home address and wrote it all down on the folder my plane ticket came in. So far that was our only hit. The guy's name was Tony Weiner CPA according to the sign on the office lobby windows of their building on R Street. I took a photo of their sign by the office entrance, it listed the primary company officers.
I walked back to the corner and looked down the street, then got in the car and drove down to the hot dog place and spoke to David over Whispernet from the parking lot. Moments later David appeared outside carrying an oil stained white paper sack in one hand. He opened the door and set the bag on the floor between his feet. The car smelled wonderful as he reached in the bag and handed me a dog wrapped in white paper, then a small bag of fries, then five packets of catsup. I set the dog on my lap and opened the wax paper. It was plump and dark red and smelled like a Polish Sausage, I love those almost as much as Nathan's Hot Dogs.
The dog had the toppings done Chicago style, so I carefully picked it up with my right hand and took a huge bite, almost half the dog, and poked the Tony Weiner home address in the GPS with my left hand, then backed out and took off across town. My mouth was so full I couldn't talk and could barely chew, but it tasted wonderful.
We had to drive across Sacramento to an unassuming middle class neighborhood on a circular street that ran around Circle Park. It took 25 minutes to get there because of traffic, especially around the massive I-80 interchange. We found the house but only drove past; I had the cell sniffer in my hand but her number never appeared, and neither did his. There were no cars in the driveway but the garage door was wide open. It looked empty except for a lawnmower. Two blocks away the main drag was 15th Street, there was a fire station there and a CPA office, but their parking lot was empty so we parked behind the building and ate the rest of the food.
"These are delicious!" I exclaimed with a mouth full of bun and Polish. David told me to shut up (he could barely understand me with my mouth literally stuffed full of food), then his phone rang. He answered it on speaker; it was the OD. She said she found a couple of incidental possible meeting times between Weiner and Lydia. She said his cousin was also a CPA, and so were his father and grandfather. Coincidentally, the name she gave us was the same as the guy whose name was on the building we were parked behind. Things were starting to get interesting. Then I had her cross reference Clyde Grimm and all those CPAs but she found nothing. Then she located a CPA office in Reno with the same name that had managed the payroll for one of his past re-election campaigns. She searched through old internet ads online and found the current shelving company CFO used to be a partner with the Reno CPA who was related to the one here in Sacramento, which connected him to Lydia, face to face.
Since accounting and payroll was a business expense she looked through their bank records for Lydia's name on any expensed charges during the campaign; she said she'd call us back. I finished my fries but ran out of catsup; David slurped down the last of his Root Beer then started munching on ice. I crumpled my French fry bag and tossed it in the white paper sack on the floor between his feet, like a three point shot across the car. David turned on the radio.
Four minutes later his cell rang and she'd located Tony Weiner's cell; it was back across the city at a restaurant/tavern about four miles from the factory on Folsom Boulevard. We quickly headed back to the house, and got out of the car and walked towards the residence and then crossed the street into the park to take advantage of cover from the trees to study the house. The residence was a plain old Midwest-looking two story home, probably no basement since it was only blocks from the Sacramento River. It had what appeared to be either an apartment or shop built onto the garage. The addition was a two story windowless structure with one door that opened on the driveway. When a fire truck roared down Circle Drive we casually walked across the street and down the driveway to the back yard.
The garage was built up against the back fence. Their back yard was tiny. The lot was on the circular street and was oddly shaped but the house sat toward the back of the lot but the one rear corner was the largest open space and the garage appeared to have been originally a single car size but had a two story shop built-on that ran out to the back and side fences. There was barely enough space between the building and the fences.
The back yard was a narrow strip of grass, maybe twelve feet deep and eighty feet wide. The two story shop was about fifteen feet wide and twenty feet deep, two stories tall and matched the original garage, the garage door was wide open but it was empty except for an old green lawnmower. We saw no doors from the garage going into the shop. Looking along the two sides there were no doors or windows. David tapped the wall and said it was vinyl siding and it felt soft. I pulled out the cell sniffer and turned the knob with my thumb and got a partial match to Lydia's number, some of the digits were missing and replaced with X's'.
He got out his knife and gently tapped on the wall listening for the location of studs while I used my cell to call the OD and update her and send her photos of the location and of David slicing the vinyl siding to see if the garage was cheaply built like most structures were these days: studs, insulation, and plastic walls.
He cut a fourteen inch wide by four foot tall opening in the vinyl siding while I shot video. He ripped out the fiberglass insulation, then cut an opening in the drywall on the inside wall and within a few minutes he punched it inward and lifted one leg up and stepped inside the structure, moments later the people-door opened inward.
Inside we turned on lights, both of us had knives out, but he had a pistol in his pocket too. The downstairs looked like a small business office. We saw two desks and computers, file cabinets, a leather sofa and some kind of dining table and chairs. The room was carpeted and had dark wood paneling, with faded/stained (1960s) orange shag carpet on the floor. David pointed to a ladder mounted to the wall in the far corner so we both silently climbed up through a small opening.
The upstairs reeked of rotten piss and stale pussy. He felt around for a light switch so I used my cell as a flashlight and found one and switched on the light. On the floor we saw a large mattress with a body on its back, naked, spread eagle, it was a female body in tight (stainless steel) four-point restraints.
We approached slowly as I whispered into my cell to the OD what we'd found. It appeared to be a Hispanic woman, unconscious but breathing. She appeared to have been tied down, raped, and beaten severely around the face. I asked the OD to call city police here and EMS to 616 Circle Drive, West Sacramento. David leaned over and tried to talk to the woman but she didn't respond. We saw her breasts rise and fall so she was alive and breathing. We also saw blood oozing from her vagina and she had bruising and bite marks across her breasts and face, it was totally horrifying. David took photos.
"Where is Weiner right now?" I asked the OD. She gave us his vehicle registration info, he drove an old BMW sedan, royal blue, and it was still at the restaurant/bar on the far east side of the city on Folsom Blvd. I said we would be leaving here as soon as EMS arrived, but we were pretty sure the prisoner was Lydia. David also took photos of her badly swollen face and a tattoo on her shoulder. I found her cell phone under a pile of clothes on a chair, Weiner apparently never noticed she still had it in her jeans pocket.
When they arrived David showed his federal ID card and said I was with him, we believed that was the kidnapping victim Lydia Ortiz and provided her mother's name and cell number. They wanted us to stay to fully report but we left quietly and ran to our car to try to catch Weiner at the bar. Our OD advised us the cops were looking for us too since we suddenly became suspects.
On the way across town I called the congressman and had him call me back at a coin phone at a bus stop on Folsom Boulevard. He called back and I updated him with what we found, he was ecstatic she was alive and getting medical care, then he asked how much he owed. I told him we weren't done yet, and asked what he wanted done with the perp? Clyde cleared his throat and hung up after several seconds of silence, which I took to be his answer. It was the reason why most politicians called us to begin with, because the bad stuff didn't have to be spoken out loud.
It was a nightmare trying to drive quickly across Sacramento, but we got on the highway, crossed the river and drove east to 59th Street and exited heading north to Folsom, then turned right. We found the bar and parked at the Taco Bell next door. We located his BMW with the correct color and plates and removed all four tire valves to make the car unusable for escape just in case he was some kind of Ninja warrior. I asked the OD to text me his driver's license or CPA license photo, whichever was newest.
We went inside and put fake names on their waiting list, waiting for a table or booth. The place was packed and very loud and we stood there studying the crowd looking for Tony Weiner. David spotted him at the bar and told me to wait in line at the door. He told me via Whispernet he was going to get him into the bathroom and air him up, I should be ready to leave quickly.
I stood with the crowd of young people inside the entrance while he walked towards the REST ROOM sign but stopped behind Weiner and said something in his ear, then he kept walking. I think I heard him say he was a state professional licensure agency inspector and had something important to tell him. Then he gestured for him to follow to the bathroom. Weiner kissed the woman he was with at the bar and told her he'd be right back, took one last swig from his drink and gestured to the bartender for a refill and walked to the Men's room. I knew David would have his knife ready to use, probably already extended and in his front right pants pocket.
The bar was loud enough playing some older Van Halen cuts that I could barely hear my Whispernet implants but I heard a scuffle then silence. Fifteen long seconds later he appeared outside the Men's Room drying his hands with a paper towel and walked towards me, his eyes locked onto mine. As soon as I saw his eyes I turned around and walked outside to our rental car. I glanced over and saw the BMW was down on its rims but the alarm never went off. Weiner certainly didn't need it anymore.
I got in the driver's seat, leaned over and checked the white paper sack, but it was empty. The car still smelled like Polish and fries. David opened the door, got in and told me, 'Go go go!' I cranked the engine and set the GPS for the airport (while I was driving out the parking lot exit) and drove us back to the car rental place. We updated the OD along the way and returned the rental car. There was one last flight out of Sacramento today. It was a regional jet to Denver so we bought two seats and landed there at 10:12pm. We got a hotel room at DIA and left for home on the first flight to ELP the next morning.
Four days later we got an anonymous overnight pack from Baltimore, it contained a key and a Post-It note that simply said, "Thanks, Doc said full recovery."
We did the usual thing, which was to check lockers upstairs on the concourse, found the right one, looked around for anyone paying attention to us and found a manila envelope in the locker that contained fifty thousand in musty old fifty dollar bills. That's one thousand fifty dollar bills. It took a while to count it on the living room sofa.
I asked how he off'd Weiner and David said Weiner stepped up to the urinal next to where David was, so he stepped back and grabbed him around the neck and pulled him backwards to the floor and smashed his head a couple times on the filthy tiles, then stabbed his neck. Blood gushed across the tile floor. So David stepped away and washed his hands and left the guy dying on the bathroom floor. He said Weiner died on the piss soaked floor at the urinals before he'd left the men's room, we were probably well on the way to the airport before the next person came in and found the body on the floor in front of the urinals. So the question is do you piss first in the toilet then call for help or run away and pretend you didn't see it?
Then he looked at me and said: 'Blood stains on white tile grouting is almost impossible to get out. They'll have to bleach and steam it for days to get the stain out."
He went to work that day around 9am but I stayed home to handle stuff, but kept my laptop linked to his so we had full time contact. We spent time in the pool that night. He was on his floaty cushion on his back, naked and hard. I slid the head of mine under his legs which put his rod at my face level and we floated around in the dark while I played with his boner for over an hour. I loved to rub his head all over my face while I stroked it and made him suffer with extreme pleasure before he produced for me.
I'll be honest about something...I think some nights when we quietly make love in the pool I can sometimes feel eyeballs peering over the side walls.
Contact the author: Effective after June 16 2023: borischenaz mailfence Or on twitter: @borischenaz
Special thanks to the editor: 'Bart' for all his work improving this book.