Chapter 23. Just a reminder, 100% of this story is 100% fiction. It's all for fun.
The next week our boss was called to Washington, he had meetings at the Pentagon with the Joint Chiefs, and David went too. He liked to bring David along because of his handsome charms, quick mind, and schmoozability. We usually got whatever the Captain wanted when my husband rode along. He said he believed there were quite a number of officers working in the Pentagon posing as hetero. Multiple people told David he should run for a seat in Congress.
One of the topics to be discussed was that a US Congressman from Nevada named Clyde Grimm was recently appointed to head the military budget oversight committee, and Grimm was the invited speaker in the auditorium. David actually shook the congressman's hand after his thirty minute speech; he said he winked at him and had recognized his name and voice. It was a formal introduction line where they had to stand and wait to shake hands in front of the Pentagon publicity photographer. They spoke briefly, the Congressman said his 'secretary' (love interest) was still recovering in a rehab hospital in Reno. He told David his rescue saved her life, she had already been in a coma and probably would have died within one day.
Two days later David came home; he told me he whispered to Clyde not to send us any clients. There were plenty of decent PIs in the country, we didn't need more business. Neither of us got the impression we'd heard the last of the congressman; he seemed to attract trouble. For someone who claimed to be the most ethical person elected to the US Congress he certainly found himself in weird-tragic situations. David said Clyde was tragedy prone, and probably an attention seeking child too.
El Paso had some nasty storms that weekend. Due to the elevation and terrain we got sand storms, mostly in the winter. West of here over in Arizona they got dust storms. What's the difference? Dust storms are thick dust clouds in the air, like a thick brown fog that rise up over 3000 feet in the air. You feel it in your eyes when you go outside and at night it looks like smoke or fog under the street lights. But sand storms are when sand was blown by strong surface winds, usually only up to around sixteen feet high, and can literally blast the paint off your car and pit your car windows. They happened under clear skies (like a blizzard can) when strong low angle surface winds blow over the desert.
I think the surface of the Chihuahua Desert was part of the reason why sand storms happened, but winds also picked up sand in town so any car outside could get damaged. It can damage anything outside: signs, bicycles, fences, mail boxes, roofs, buildings, etc. Probably the closer it sat to the ground the worse the damage. Most passenger airlines won't fly during a sand storm. El Paso was around 3400 feet above sea level, and I'm sure that was a factor that contributed too. I don't think Tucson got sand storms and they were almost the same climate and altitude. Tucson was not in the Chihuahua Desert, it's in the Sonora Desert. The contour and appearance of the Chihuahua Desert was caused by hundreds of years of blowing sand. People get very sick after sand and dust storms because fungi that live in the desert sand become airborne and people inhale it and get infected like a severe form of pneumonia that is difficult to treat. All desert areas in the world have those weird fungal lung infections, and they all have local names too.
The quickest way to tell if a used car was from El Paso was to sit inside and look very closely at the windshield for thousands of tiny pits. They're easier to see if you look toward the sun. You'll see tiny white dots all over the glass, mostly the windshield and headlight covers. Paint damage was often seen on the corners of the vehicle, near the turn signals. If we drove into one on the way home we always stopped and waited it out. They seldom lasted for more than a few hours.
It was only three days until our next call. This time we were contacted by a county sheriff in Casper Wyoming. David got the call while I was out getting lunch for everyone at our office.
The Sheriff said he'd received phone calls from two dozen locals about a group that was going around the local cattle ranches trying to stir up anti-government hysteria, trying to form an armed group to chase the latest immigrants out of their county (most were from Central America). There were several recent beatings in town of innocent, un-armed families walking to the ice cream shop in the evening. One young man from Guatemala and his wife were beaten in front of their children by a gang of hooded young men dressed like cattle wranglers. He said they shouted racial slurs and told them to go back to Venezuela. So far, nobody came forward with witness statements but low quality video from a nearby ATM showed a group of people stood around watching the beatings. The Sheriff said they needed technology they could not afford in order to identify the perps. Our boss accepted the case without asking us first.
Perhaps the only nice part was Casper Wyoming was easy for us to get to, straight up I-25 to the center of Wyoming, we took two days to get there since it was not a time sensitive case.
We left the next day in David's truck, early in the morning before the sun. We drove to Colorado Springs and got a motel room in an old place without a pool, but it had several restaurants nearby. On the drive up I called the Sheriff and asked for all their videos to be copied to a single SD card so we could run them through our facial recognition system.
He said they were recently arrived border crossers but I told him they might have photos in the system already since many had driver's licenses or arrest records back in their home country. Some of those folks were released from prisons if they agreed to leave the country and never return.
That evening we walked to a store near the motel and got three bottles of wine and on the way back we got some food, two twelve-inch Italian hoagies. The nine dollar a bottle red wine went well with our hoagies. We sat up on the bed eating and drinking with the TV on but the sound muted. Chips, hoagies, chilled wine... the food of the Gods! We tried to go to sleep but were still too wired from drinking coffee all the way across New Mexico and part way across Colorado, so I blew him and fell asleep with my head on his soft tummy, my right hand on his balls, his head against my face.
We left before the sun and drove across Cheyenne during the morning rush hour. It's like four hours from Cheyenne to Casper, but the area was very pretty. The land along I-25 north of Cheyenne was low hills, long distance horizons, very few trees, and not much except grass and short weeds. If you picture the enormous herds of Bison that fed thousands of Indians in the 1700s and earlier, that was what it looked like. It was mile after mile of nothing but grass and small hills. A few hours later we saw signs of life appear and suddenly we entered Casper.
First, we got a hotel room then met the Sheriff at a Dunkin Donuts at a back corner table. He slid a box of day old donuts across the table toward us and raised the lid (which we left there because we don't eat that kind of thing), but I'm sure a gift like that would be appropriate at a police station! I slowly closed the box and turned it back towards him while he told us the story.
He handed us a transcribed phone call and notes made by officers interviewing people that reported the beatings or had witnessed attempts to organize an anti-government revolt in the state capitol. The 911 operators in town started to get threatening calls, either they run the migrants out of the county or executions would begin. They accused the cops of allowing migrants to invade, when they should be stopped and turned around at the county line.
Sheriff Gary Mack explained this was not a case of people upset with court rulings or school board meetings, but these people were trying to organize an armed revolt to remove the current county and city government, the school board, and all managers.
I had a few questions to ask carefully so we didn't insult him in the process but the way they described their problem we could tell they were avoiding saying certain phrases.
"Is this like a white supremacy movement?"
The Sheriff replied, "Oh hell no. We think most of the people involved are ranch hands in the surrounding areas. Those folks are mostly Native American and Mexican. Mexico has a huge horse, cowboy, and cattle culture. I'd say about 15 percent of those folks were dark skinned, about 40 percent brown skinned, and the rest are white and oriental. We got descendants from the Chinese that built the transcontinental railroad across California and Nevada living in this county. I think most of these folks are just afraid of change and they don't want what they see happening around the country to be allowed in here."
"So what do they want the county and city to do that isn't being done now?"
"I think they want something like signs at the county line warning people that sneak over the border to turn around, but the county cannot legally do that. There were different groups inside the main group that wanted different things. Like they also wanted all recreational drug laws abolished, speed limit laws abolished, they wanted armed guards in all schools, and they wanted the Sheriff to ignore any state and federal laws they didn't like. They wanted us to kick out all feds, like the FDA and the IRS. All feds must register at the courthouse and surrender their weapons before conducting business, and income taxes abolished."
"They're not gonna like us, except we're good old boys from Texas, but we are the Feds!" David injected.
"I think the crux of our problem is there are two or three men that are the main noise makers and get their neighbors and friends worked up and pissed off and if they could be cut down to size I think the movement would wither on the vine and go back to not being so overblown and aggressive."
I asked if he knew who they were and he said yes, `...their names were Doug Green, Randy Jones, and Steve Nelson. All of them were ranch hands that had run-ins with the IRS. And two of them had been in court for selling raw cow's milk to their neighbors.'
"Selling raw milk is a crime in Wyoming?" David asked with a tone of disbelief?
"Yes by state law, and in some cases also a federal law, but lots of people prefer it over factory milk. It's what they call Killed Milk."
David told him we would not get involved in milk related cases but we would look into the threats and rumors of an armed insurrection in town. We told him we'd review their notes and asked if he recommended anyone we could meet with to introduce us to at least one of the three men.
"Yes, the Baptist church in town, Reverend Wilson is the one to ask for, just drive up to the house beside the church and knock on the door, tell him I sent you. He's a good man, you can rely on his word."
"We'll do that tomorrow." I said.
We parted ways and drove to the motel and then walked around to check out local restaurants and maybe a grocery store too.
The place we stayed at had a parking lot next door, but the building itself was about 100 years old, and it was near the center of town. It was a red brick three story building, looked like it was originally a fire department/hotel and was now a museum with a fire truck and rooms on the second and third floors with a communal kitchen and TV room, pool table, vending machines, and a sauna. We were not the only tourists there, which surprised me. The place was on the former main street before the highway bypassed the center of town and killed the original downtown.
We could tell from looking around the neighborhood that a lot of bulldozing had been done here over the past 50 years. There were lots of empty lots in the former downtown district, but somehow this old building survived. David thought the empty lots might have been caused by wildfires that swept through town.
The walls were very thick, so on the outside it wasn't steel or wood frame, it was originally a brick shell with wood framing inside, what today would be called a 'Fire Trap.' David pointed out the presence of sprinklers in every room, so perhaps the only thing that might bring it down would be an earthquake or a huge forest fire. Its weakest point was the flat tar roof had no sprinklers.
We'd stayed in an old building just like it down in Bisbee Arizona called the Copper Queen Hotel, which was built in the 1800s and still stands and operates today. This place reminded me of that but not as elegant. And the one in Bisbee was supposedly haunted, if you're into that sort of thing.
Three blocks away we found an old diner, also from the 1920s, and the inside looked mostly original. They had carry-out beer and wine so after an early supper we stocked up on essentials then went to our room, we had a lot of reading to do. Back in room 321 we got changed into sleeping clothes (old hospital scrubs) and got in bed with the headboard lights on and started reading and occasionally commenting.
"Did you notice the look we got when I told the lady at the desk we wanted a room with one bed and a private bath?" David asked.
"No!" I laughed, "What did she do?"
"She looked at both of us and made a fake smile. I saw it on her face, when she realized it was two men asking for a room with one bed, how disgusting! She'd probably mention it during bible study this Wednesday evening."
"How quaint." I mumbled. "She should have mentioned there was a New Testament in the bedside drawer." We both laughed.
He leaned over and pulled out the drawer but there was no Gideon Bible, I think that was the first hotel room I saw without one, so I checked my side. No bible there either. I said, "Well I'll be dipped."
As I leaned over to pull out the drawer David leaned over to look too and set his hand directly on my crotch and gave me a friendly squeeze then he sat back down and resumed reading.
About half an hour went by, then he asked, "What did they have in the vending machines?"
"Chips, cookies, pop, beer, condoms, Tylenol, Ibuprofen, stuff like that."
"How much was a beer?" he asked.
"Two bucks a can. It was a 1990s Pepsi vending machine but it had a thing for taking dollar bills."
He got out of bed and went to his suitcase. I heard a zipper go around and he came back with some one dollar bills. I set down my packet of papers and put shoes on and a sweat shirt and walked down the hallway to what probably used to be the fire crew day-room and bought four cold cans of Coors beer.
We spent the rest of the day reading and discussing. Then he put our computer online and started researching the three prime suspects in the fed database.
Of course we found the two guys with a history of tax collection actions.
Doug Green was a 41 year old man, born locally. He was a Marine veteran but never saw combat. He stopped filing tax returns in 1997 and was arrested in 1999 and bailed out and had been in court with the IRS ever since. Today, he rented a mobile home on a large cattle ranch where he was supposedly a ranch hand (cowboy). He has never had any other run-ins with the law but has registered weapons and was known to have a hot temper and willingness to put up his dukes and never walk away from a barroom brawl.
Randy Jones was from a nearby small town and moved to Casper ten years ago after arrests for DWI and assault. He was not a vet, and had a high school education. He was 6'3" and also had no fear of getting in fights. He was unmarried but had a medical history of exposure to STDs from prostitutes.
Steve Nelson was from Montana and moved here with a woman, but they were never married, she had a daughter she said was his but his name was not on the birth certificate. He had an arrest record for tax delinquency, assault, and possession of a controlled substance. He lived in a migrant cabin on a ranch outside of town and had registered pistols and semi-auto rifles. He tried to open a sporting goods shop in town four years ago but could not compete with the internet stores. Then he tried selling hunting/fishing gear but had difficulty getting along with customers so it folded and now he spent his days on the back of a horse protecting a large herd of cattle from bears and wolves.
Next, we obtained their cell phone records and emails/texts from the NSA database. We applied the normal search mechanism to look for trouble areas but didn't find much. We compared the records from the county 911 operator to cell call logs and found one match, very close to the same time as the threatening calls but it didn't come from the three primary suspects, it came from a cell registered to a welfare-phone recipient. The name data was corrupted, it actually read: Oc io Bu m te. The database showed it had a history of visiting a local quick mart in the morning, around sunrise. So we decided to go there with my cell sniffer and see if we could identify the mystery man. My guess was he was Hispanic but not a recent migrant, possibly someone that also lived in the outskirts of town.
Out on Poison Spider Road west of town we parked at the local quickie mart to stalk our prey: the guy registered to the phone number that appeared on the screen for the worst of the threatening calls to the county sheriff. I held the sniffer and raised it when any car drove up. And as if on cue, an overweight middle aged Hispanic guy got out of an older Chevy truck and went inside to grab a tall coffee and a bagel. We followed him into town, with some other guy in the passenger seat. They drove back towards town and drove into the employee parking lot at a nice looking golf course (Three Boulders Golf Club) about two miles from our motel. We ran his license plate and it came back registered to one Octavio Bustamante. Our records indicated he was the grounds manager at the golf course and had worked there for five+ years. He was driving on a suspended license and had a record of four DUIs and had recently done time in the county jail, four months (some of it on work release), and was out on supervised probation and wore an ankle bracelet.
David said he could see why the guy was pissed off at the cops but he was dumb if he thought his calls couldn't be traced because there was no wire.
There were actually a lot of people (in the USA) that did not understand how cellular worked and thought you had to dial an extra prefix or something to reach someone on the road. "Well my cell number is 555-1212 but I got no clue what ya dial if I'm a hunnerd miles from home in the car? Maybe you gotta call the overseas operator er sumpin."
It was clear by reading his records that he walked across the border into Texas about twelve years ago and ended up in Casper, living with a distant relative. He was an alcoholic and sometimes got pissed off and made stupid phone calls. There was nothing we were going to do to improve that, he's just trying to get by, like everyone else.
We wasted about four hours on him so we went back to the motel and reviewed our notes and decided to go visit Mr. Nelson. His personal habits made him easy to bump into. On the drive to locate Mr. Nelson we discussed Mr. Bustamante, if he would benefit from us scaring him to stop making cell calls when he's drunk and angry.
About eight miles east of Casper on US Route 26 was a small desert community called Meadow Acres. In the center of that 'town' was a bar called The Lazy Joker. We got there before quitting time (3pm this time of year) at the local cattle ranches that populated the areas along the North Platte River. We had booking photos of Steve Nelson and since we had Whispernet we sat apart at the bar and waited for him to arrive. In the meantime we sipped beers and ordered small sandwiches with chips and nice long kosher pickles that were so tart it made my saliva glands ache. They had a tiny kitchen that only made sandwiches and small pizzas.
I ordered Pastrami on Rye with Swiss cheese, lightly baked, with a side cup of coleslaw and two long pickle slices. It came with packets of mustard, mayo, and Cholula.
From opposite sides of the bar we couldn't see each other but we could talk freely while the TVs above the bar were playing some kind of gambling network, people were playing poker with folks at other bars in the state over an internet based video gambling network. It seemed to take almost fifteen minutes to play each hand as all the players tried to act like they really weren't paying much attention. Another TV had reruns of Ponderosa and another played reruns of Clint Eastwood's old spaghetti westerns. Everyone was paying close attention to the poker game so David and I could Whispernet freely without being noticed. It takes some amount of throat movement to do it, which other people can see. But not in this place! Everyone had at least one eye on the TVs above the bar.
Twenty minutes later Steve Nelson arrived with three other cowboys from the ranch area north of town along the river. The noise level in the bar immediately increased when the door swung open. I had no idea if they had special seats since they were regulars, but we sat in the middle on each side hoping to be nearby so we could chat about politics or something that got them blabbering stupid shit.
I guess they had to graze cattle along the river to have enough water to grow grasses for the cattle to eat, otherwise they'd have to learn to live off eating rocks and flies.
Steve and his cohorts came in and grabbed the seats closest to the door, so he was five stools down from David. Observing the guys you could tell this was their daily routine. The barkeep lady set up beers for each one without being asked. Each guy set out a couple twenty dollar bills and paid attention to the gambling on the TVs above the center of the bar, the shelves with all the booze and wine bottles were stacked up like a pyramid. That stack was what prevented me from seeing David.
It took a while for any of them to figure out who was playing poker and that it was nobody they knew, all the players used handles instead of names but it showed what city they were in. Two gamblers on the TV were actually playing at a truck stop near Cheyenne. It looked like a neat set-up but card playing for money wasn't my thing.
About forty minutes later the TV went black, it said "loss of signal" I guess a hiccup in the internet somewhere broke the network so the topic of discussion turned to work and the truckload of new cattle that arrived today.
I asked the guy sitting beside me what they were going on about and he said they got young male cows delivered today. On arrival they were about six months old and came by the trailer load. They were grazed for about 18 months until they were ready for slaughter at 24-26 months of age, based mostly on their estimated weight. Every time they delivered new cows there were always conflicts as the established steer had to teach the newcomers who's in charge of the herd and how things were done. He said almost every herd of mammal animals worked that way, probably the dinosaurs did the same thing too. Since they had no girl cows the guys had nothing else to do but start shit with each other over rank.
It was kind of funny to listen to him describe a herd of cattle as if they were a semi-load of 4th graders.
The conversation across the bar started to get loud when the topic of the day turned to politics and everyone ganged up on the bartender who was the only liberal in the bar willing to admit it out loud. They got into arguments but most of it was just blowing off steam. I asked the cowboy by me, "I heard someone threatened the cops out here." He gestured to the three now intoxicated men across the bar, near David. He said they started all the shit locally, always been like that but it's just talk, nothing serious. None of them were smart enough to do any of the shit they threatened, and all of them were entirely too lazy to get off their fat asses and do anything. Except for that one guy, the stupidest one of all, but... "As you can see he's too drunk to tie his own shoes, and he's here six nights a week doing the same shit. Yellin' and gettin' shitfaced drunk. It's just them blowing off steam. They think they're all bad ass mother fuckers but all they are is a bunch of lazy fuckin' fat-ass alcoholics." He took a swig of his beer then leaned towards me and mumbled, "In my 'pinion them's a waste uh gud beer."
I laughed and repeated what he said to David over our implants. He remained silent but I heard him chatting with the guy next to him. He went outside with a group of 'em to smoke and got 'em talkin' 'bout things that made 'em angry.
After a while the cowboy beside me said that if anyone in town thought they were an actual threat they'd disappear that same day. He set his beer down and said, "You know when the last time the bank in town got robbed by a local man?"
"No."
"1944, a returning vet held up the bank and was found dead in his car before the Sheriff got called. He was shot sixteen times from ten different rifles. That's how we roll and those boys know it." I laughed after he said that, and thought I should research his claim.
We spent almost six hours on those bar stools and both of us got drunk so we carefully drove back downtown to the motel and recorded notes into our voice recorder on the slow drive back, and went to bed around 1am. I told David we should stop at the antique store and buy some antlers to mount on the front of his Toyota!
At 01:20 I had the bed spins so bad I thought I'd fall out of bed. I got up and dashed to the bathroom and puked. David said I fell asleep on the bathroom floor, but he got me back in bed. I think he took two pictures of me asleep on the bathroom floor with my arms folded over the toilet seat and my head down on my arms, passed out in my underwear. He was afraid I'd puke again so he wouldn't let me snuggle against him, I had to hug a pillow instead and sleep facing the wall. I told him I wanted to take a picture of his body, neck to waist, front and back, and have 'em printed life-size on pillow cases. He laughed at me but I wasn't kidding.
We slept until almost noon, I had a horrible headache and felt nauseated all day. We worked on our notes and called our boss to discuss what we learned so far. We used my laptop on video conference mode, he immediately noticed I looked sick. David made a bottoms-up hand gesture, while I told the Captain I had a migraine. I saw out of the corner of my eye when I said that David was shaking his head NO to the Captain.
We stayed in our room, where I slept most of the day and we even used their sauna. It smelled like it hadn't been turned on in a year. But our bed was super comfortable, the pillows were huge and fluffy, and the sheets were nearly as smooth as David's big flat nipples. For dinner we did some research online and found a nice Italian place on the north side of town with delivery and ordered a baked stuffed Ziti dish with meatballs and extra sauce and cheese on the side. We got salads and a 12-pack of beer too. That meal was super expensive for two people, almost 90 bucks with delivery, tip, and tax.
David said he was surprised the Sheriff never called him. That evening after dinner we called him at 7:50pm and asked to meet him in the parking lot beside the old fire station (our motel). About fifteen minutes later a very nice looking Ford truck pulled into the lot and shut down. We got into his back seat and discussed our findings.
David did most of the talking. "We interviewed about fourteen people around town and over in Meadow Acres."
The Sheriff interrupted, "Wow, you boys don't mess around, I'd be lucky to get one person to talk to me or my deputies."
"Yeah, well not being known here helped. I was surprised they talked to us but the alcohol helped. So what we learned was the threats y'all 'er hearin' are mostly bullshit, drunks blowing off steam and venting their frustration at the economy and a growing sense of helplessness."
"Yah I could see that, I felt it too sometimes." But his empathy sounded insincere. It kind of made me wonder how he got elected if he always talked that way.
We took turns explaining things we heard people say that were close friends of his three suspects. In every case their best friends laughed and said it was just talk, empty threats, bullshit, drunk talk, bragging, etc. None of them believed any of them could mount an attack on anyone for any reason. They said all of them were alcoholics and were no threat to anyone but themselves. By the time we finished our report the Sheriff looked much more relaxed and asked if that was our formal response to his plea for help; David smiled and said yes in a serious tone of voice. David suggested he might try to organize some AA meetings in town, encourage them to start and keep it going. Give them a place to meet, free of charge. Maybe a church or meeting hall that had a bathroom and a small kitchen and lots of chairs and a big coffee pot; it would be nice if they had access to an indoor place where smoking was allowed too.
The Sheriff held out his hand to David to thank him but said, "So if one of those Bozos walks into the police station with an AK47 and opens fire tomorrow it's your fault?"
David looked at him as if he just insulted us and ignored his outstretched hand, he glanced at me then back at the Sheriff and said, "And on that note, I think our work here is done." We got out of his truck and walked across the parking lot and into the motel door and up the stairs to the third floor. In the hallway he said, "He really was an asshole, wasn't he?"
"Sort of sounded that way; like I said, I wonder how he got elected if he normally talks like that?"
David added, "Maybe he said that because he's got a monkey on his back too but never got it thrown in his face before."
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"Maybe the Sheriff is secretly a problem drinker and we got too close to his secret. Kind of like taking anti-aircraft fire when we're over the target."
"Ohhh, I like that."
He opened our door and we crash landed on top of the freshly made bed. "When you wanna go home?" David asked. We were both on our stomachs on the bed sort of looking at the floor on the far side of the bed. "Oh, let's leave now in case we get another case called to the office."
"Cool, let's go."
He went downstairs to settle the bill, we got charged for another night even though we weren't spending the night or even ruffling up the bed. I packed our stuff and double checked the room. No, still no bibles in the drawers. We got downstairs in his truck at 9:45pm and advised the OD we were on the way home, this case was essentially investigated and cancelled, we had no cause for action here. Since we slept 'til noon we were wide awake, but it was dark out which sort of made me get tired easy on the highway.
Out of town on I-25 sometimes we didn't see another vehicle for twenty minutes, not even a semi. David turned on the extra lights on the front bumper because of all the animals that ran around out there on the grasslands.
Our first discussion was why animals that could clearly see moving vehicles still ran in front of them when running across the highway. David said they ignored them because they didn't understand them. I said I thought they couldn't understand something moving faster than their top running speed. I mean, how often do you hear of two deer colliding? I think they misunderstand and run into vehicles. Then David said maybe it was a combination of reasons.
"What about dogs? They ride in cars with the window down and see the world go by much faster than they can run, I'm sure they understand cars. Why do dogs get hit? I asked.
David said he thought they didn't understand the danger since cars seemed so wonderful when you're riding in the back seat.
Then I asked, "Why do they like to stick their heads out the window and sniff the air?"
He said he thought some dogs were memorizing the sequence of scents so if they got lost they might find their way home. That was probably how wolves navigated vast open grasslands, follow the series of scents back home. Migrating birds had an internal compass so certain directions felt different from others, and they probably visually recognized land features like shore lines and rivers. They might also have some genetic memory going on too.
We had to have hours of discussions to keep each other awake on long road trips, especially at night. David always said that he believed dogs were much smarter than most people realized, we had a long discussion about what they understood about cars and modern life. We both wished we could have a dog but with our work schedule it would be impossible and unfair to the dog.
We arrived in the Denver metro area as the sun peeked over horizon. We stopped for a sit-down breakfast and discuss if we wanted to nap or press-on. It was safer driving long distance (fueled by lots of truck stop coffee) with both of us in the front seats talking constantly. We ate breakfast at a truck stop on I-25 then decided to press-on south. For those long runs when we were low on sleep he kept a book of brain teasers in the glove box; I read them and added extra hints for him to solve while he sat at the wheel, hopefully in maximum comfort. David spent a shitload of money on this truck so he got all the options he wanted, comfort was his goal. He says he loved to drive, that puzzled me because I didn't 'love' to drive, I tolerated it.
At Santa Fe we decided to call it quits, even though it was only 2pm. We'd stopped in this town before but there was a new hotel near the highway so we went there. It was a Red Roof Inn with an indoor pool and laundry. David played the check-in game while I started a load of laundry. We had left the weapons case in our basement at home which really made the trip easier to handle, not having to worry about nuclear weapons while sitting in bars or spying on suspects.
I think being disarmed also changed how we treated suspects and strangers. With two nukes and a machine gun in my backpack it kind of made me a little ballsy with guys. I mean who would I lose to, except maybe someone that shot me before I had a chance to grab my machine gun. Those situations seldom sneaked up on you.
The drive home from Santa Fe was a no-brainer for us, we'd done it so many times. We've gotten to know every mile of I-25 down the center of New Mexico. It really was a beautiful state, if only it had ocean front or one really big lake they'd have everything. David said we should write a travel guide for I-25, maybe sell it to AAA or publish it ourselves. We'd probably have to drive the entire length and video both sides so we captured every business, every tourist trap. Denver was a madhouse, way too much to capture every attraction and hotel there. We rarely stopped in Colorado; way too much radioactive ground water contamination.
We parked in our driveway at 2:42pm; I carried in our stuff and went to the basement to un-hide our weapons case and put it back in the Tac-room. Nothing was touched inside or outside. We showered and ended up in the pool that afternoon, we also ordered delivery (hot cheesy sandwiches with sliced meats). David spent time on the phone with our boss to try to convince him why our outcome in Casper was okay with a body count of zero. Most of the stuff they got scared by was supposedly just drunk talk and crap from the locals. It'll blow over eventually.
Our boss often got follow-up calls from places we worked. It's not that often we left without drawing a weapon. Some people that asked us for help felt the only reason nobody died was because we were scared or lazy, but that's never the case. It's all business to us, there were some communities that were better off if someone was permanently removed from the area. And I think some people don't realize they've turned into bullies. They had a few of them up in Casper too, but that was an easily resolved local issue. A decent sheriff would know how to handle it. David said the world would be a better place if everyone quit watching TV, and kids played outside.
We went to bed around 9pm and returned to our normal status the next day, spent nine hours at the airport office like normal. We spend a lot of time evaluating security risks for major attractions around the western USA. This week we were looking closely at Nebraska. I had no idea how many historical attractions were in that state until we started evaluating them one by one.
We learned that sometimes historical attractions had a small group of local people upset about something. Many of those sites were for events like famous battles (Indians versus the Army), large wildfires, serial bank robbers, and famous gangsters gunned down or captured during Prohibition. But if you were 100% Pawnee and assimilated into the community and felt a monument to a battle in 1802 in Nebraska where the Army gunned down thirty Pawnee (one of them was your ancestor) was not in good taste, you might find the facts stated on it to be dishonest or unfair. That's a door that swung wildely both ways.
Nebraska had a lot of little issues like that, which had been ignored since the state was founded, but they never went away. There were people going around the state removing all the Indian battle historical signs because all of them were 'full of lies.' The governor feared it might escalate into full blown terrorism and invited us to investigate. David accepted the case, his parents told him he was 20% Indian and I felt that gave him sympathies for their causes.
We flew tourist class to Omaha and rented a car, then drove across the state to Morrill Nebraska. It was a former railroad town in far western Nebraska. Parts of the terrain resembled what we saw in Casper Wyoming. This area had access to a plentiful water supply from the Little Platte River so there were lots of those circular farms that watered with fluid pumped straight out of the river. They mostly grew corn and soy. Most of the crop ended up in oil products, gasoline additives, cattle feeds, and Doritos (which taste wonderful).
About thirty percent of the county residents were Pawnee but there was no reservation since most were too low a percentage Indian to qualify for benefits, but you could easily see it in hair color, eye color, skin color, and the local culture. There was a political move to remove the teaching of Pawnee history from schools and replace it with history of Islam and Hinduism but the locals objected loudly and wanted it returned to what had been taught locally since one-room school houses sat in every township and kids rode horses to school. Schools had fenced pastures for horses, and there were no roads.
One school board member had been shot and killed and others threatened (face to face in public). The shooter fled the area and had not been captured.
The more we researched the case the less it sounded like something we were authorized to resolve. Criminality and terrorism were not the same. Scary crime was not necessarily terrorism. But we kept heading west across Nebraska in a rental car, I never realized how wide that state was until we started driving across it to the small town which was on US Route 26, about six miles east of the Wyoming state line. We got a room in town on the highway on the east side. One of the cheapest rates we'd paid lately ($60). The place only had thirty rooms, no pool, gas pumps out front, a stainless steel diner next door, and a mobile home park across the street. The hotel was behind the diner, and we nearly missed it.
After unpacking we called the cops and met one at the diner in a booth in the corner. She spread out photos of the accused gunman and summarized the evidence that included surveillance video of the shooting outside the school corporate offices. The school district served the entire county and several small towns: one high school, two middle schools, and four elementary schools.
After she left we stayed at the diner and started researching the murder suspect, his name was Paul J. Popen. He was a local guy, born and raised here. She said the thing that started the entire problem was when the home DNA oral swab tests came out that claimed to show your ancestry, a bunch of people in town tried them out of curiosity. She guessed the majority of people never read the fine print, but your results were not necessarily private. Many swabs with intact full DNA samples were given to the FBI to be added to their database. That fact was also kept secret.
When word got around and the nearest Pawnee Tribal Government found out they purchased copies of all local results and started reducing benefits for people based on those test results. At the same time, by coincidence, the school board decided to drop Pawnee History requirements for high school graduation and replaced it with international religious history instead. Two days after the announcement the trouble started and the board president was shot in the main office parking lot.
At subsequent meetings local citizens disrupted the meetings and board members were threatened in stores and at home. One of them had a partially gutted cat tied to a tree in her front yard, another one had two wood crosses erected in her yard at night. But they stuck by their decision to maintain the change in curriculum. The school board now meets online and the members have left town out of fear for their lives and their families too.
David sarcastically said, "I can't imagine why?"
We identified the suspect, and found his cell number and his vehicle ID info. Nebraska already had a warrant issued but not well circulated around the state. When we searched records in Lincoln, Grand Island, and Omaha the warrant hadn't even been posted yet. It took months until it appeared in post offices or the FBI website.
Using our access to national plate readers which were mostly on the interstate highways we learned the plate was last scanned near Grand Island. We checked the cell account and found it was still active, and running in Grand Island Nebraska.
Grand Island was a small city in south central Nebraska with about 50,000 people, 10% of them lived below the poverty line. The city was known for its multiple large meat packing plants and widespread groundwater contamination due to its long history as a place where bombs and explosives were made starting during World War-2 and continuing into the early 1970s.
After the police officer left we continued to review her information and compared it to what we found in fed databases. She neglected to say they knew who did the threatening that caused elected school board members to leave town but had not yet resolved those issues. In the local newspaper we found no recent mention of any change in their lesson plans.
Another thing that angered the locals was the action of the nearby tribal government. Historically, to be considered 100% Pawnee at birth what it required was that both parents listed on the birth certificate to also be listed on their birth certificates as 100% Pawnee. There were no other tests performed. If your birth was the result of two 100% Pawnee parents then you were 100% Pawnee and were entitled to 100% benefits from the tribe. If your percentage was lower it decreased your benefits directly. A person with 75% Pawnee at birth could only qualify for 75% of benefits. That meant if you went to the IHS clinic you had a 25% co-pay. If you could get rent assistance, they deducted 25% from what you would normally receive.
Over the generations of Pawnee making Pawnee children during the time when settlers were moving west across the Plains... things happened, people met, and suddenly non-Indian DNA started to appear and spread across the population to the point where people with true 100% Pawnee DNA was unusual. So the worst thing any of them could do was to get a DNA home test and let anyone else see the results.
For example, if the Tribe had 100,000 members and 10,000 of them got tested and none of those tested 100% Pawnee then they could reduce the amount of money they paid out every month and save the tribe tons of money. All it took was one little secret transgression 110 years ago by someone's great grandmother and it had ripple effects on that family for the rest of time, since they would never again test 100%. Actually, nobody tested 100% since the oral swab tests were not accurate and were just for fun and would not stand up in court.
In most tribes across North America if you fell below 51% you no longer qualified for benefits resulting in cash payments or reimbursements. Tribal benefits in some places included: transportation, food, utilities, housing, medical care, pharmacy, day care, education, burial, and Pawnee-only ceremonies. In Nebraska they owned and operated two large casinos along I-80 which was a major source of income for the tribe and had a huge benefit to members.
Once word got out those people stopped buying mouth swab DNA tests and several families were forced to leave home and live in Section-8 housing after they lost tribal benefits based on a DNA swab result. Some people may look totally Native American but test 30% or less, and vice versa.
We called the newspaper reporter that wrote the story about DNA test kits and got some insight we didn't hear from police. She told us there was an election this November and all the school board members that voted on changing the curriculum were highly likely to be removed from office, and the anti-Pawnee changes un-done the next semester.
That seemed to wrap up most of our case, except for the murder suspect, we decided to leave tomorrow but keep our hotel room and try to capture him and return him to Morrill.
We left early, just after 3am and drove east on US 26 to Ogallala where we got on I-80 and headed east to Grand Island. I had his cell number programmed in my sniffer and his license plate memorized. We had his approximate location based on the cell networks. I gotta say US Route 26 was not at all straight as it crossed western Nebraska, it started to annoy me after a while. It must have followed an old horse path. The map showed his cell was across the street from Shoemaker Elementary School on the west side of town. It was a neighborhood of privately owned lots with manufactured housing on each lot, but according to stats it was a low crime area. The target residence faced North Cherokee Avenue, just north of West Old Potash Highway.
It took us almost six hours to drive (back across Nebraska) to Grand Island, we had the OD call city police when we entered the metro area on I-80. During our trip the suspect's cell did not move and was not used. We arrived at 9:15am at the elementary school, and a city police car met us there. We stood outside and discussed our visit and showed our Fed ID cards.
Of course David had to quiz the cop what they were supposed to do if they caught us driving 70mph in town and ran our license plate. But this cop had all the right answers, we were impressed. We offered to let her drive along but she said she would stay at the school since she could see the residence from the back side and not trigger any reaction with the appearance of her police car.
The owner of the home was a relative of Paul Popen but we did not know how, maybe cousins. He was a single, divorced man with no arrest record.
Standing in the parking lot we could see the back wall of the house but made sure they did not see us looking at them. We discussed how to approach the house and David decided to try to activate his cell to do a little spying first, just to be safe.
It took about four minutes to have his cell sent the activation signal since the local G3 data network was slow, but it worked and the phone rebooted and activated the camera and microphone. We heard what sounded like a TV playing some kind of game show and two men talking in another room but they were impossible to understand. We could see Paul's truck in the driveway, in front of the resident's car to make his truck less visible from the street. The camera image was a view of a textured ceiling. We sat in the rental car for half an hour listening, and shut off the camera. We definitely heard two adult male voices talking, but could only pick out an occasional word. The voices were similar, possibly relatives or similar sized men.
In that neighborhood there were very few trees or bushes so the area around the house was wide open, there was no way we could get closer without being seen so we decided to use a spider with one sleep tab and an extra battery. That far west it was hard (expensive) to grow grass, most homes had dirt and dead weeds in the yard, a few had rocks instead of grass).
I got out the stuff and got it ready to go while David sat in the police car back seat and watched on our tablet computer. The only way I had to get near was to drive our rental car down the street and toss the spider out the window on the ground. We've never thrown a spider out the window before, there was a chance it might break a leg and not function, but we had to try. I decided to hold it in my hand and hang my arm out the window, hand down so all I had to do was open my fingers, which would minimize the fall to maybe three feet onto soft powdery dirt.
I got everything ready, turned on the spider after loading it, and drove slowly up Cherokee Avenue along the opposite side of the street, trying not to stare at the target residence. I had my left arm dangling out the window and directly across the street I gently dropped it on the ground and kept moving down the street, turned onto another road and drove back to the school. David drove the spider across the street, down their driveway, and up the outside of the house to the roof and down the sewer vent pipe.
The plumbing Gods smiled on us because the first exit he tried took him into the kitchen sink, then up on the counter, up the wall and on top of the kitchen cabinets. The lens was still a little gooey but 2/3 of it was clear so he moved it to allow us a close up view of two men seated at a small table using laptop computers, drinking coffee, and talking about normal guy stuff.
Our suspect was immediately visible, like his driver's license photo, he had very long straight black hair in a pony tail on his back, he was slender, maybe 120lbs, maybe 5'7". He had brown skin and looked almost the same as the other man except the resident didn't have long hair. We were also able to match a shoulder tattoo on the suspect to his medical records. David noticed what looked like a 12-gauge shotgun leaned against the wall near the side kitchen door. The cop said that was typical for households here to have a shotgun near the door, it was not alarming but it did present a danger to us and his safe capture. Our intention was to return all three of us alive and uninjured to Morrill today.
So we told the spider to survey the residence and report ASAP.
Our spiders had a hurry-up mode that would sacrifice details in favor of increased speed, during movement it meant they focused on speed over stealth. Speed also reduced battery life. But sometimes speed was necessary and in this case the spider already had a second battery. They were powered by a little button battery soldered in place. I inserted a second one in the two rear slots. The second slot got the sleep gas pellet.
Nine minutes later a floor map started to appear with heat sources colored red: the two men in the kitchen. The rest of the house was empty of living creatures. We made up our minds and decided to use gas so David gave them a full shot of gas after moving the spider across the kitchen and parked it on the underside of the kitchen table. It held onto a metal bracket under the table so the gas would rise up their front sides and right into their noses without being seen.
The resident collapsed to the floor but the suspect fell forward onto his laptop and remained in the chair. The cop drove us over with all our gear and nine minutes after gas-time we entered the residence. David kicked-in the kitchen door and handcuffed both men. David picked up the spider and dropped it in his shirt pocket. I emptied the shot gun of shells and dropped them in the kitchen trash can.
We scanned his fingerprints and confirmed he was the dude, the only suspect in the shooting murder in Morrill. After he woke up David and the cop got him up to piss and walked him outside to our rental car and we strapped him in the back seat with his wrists tied to his thighs so he couldn't reach the seatbelt buckles. The cop called an ambulance for the resident and took him to the ER to clear him, and then he was driven back home and released with a court date ticket to explain to a local judge why he was harboring a felony fugitive.
We thanked the local cop, shook hands and gave her our extra bottle of wine and drove south toward I-80, our backseat passenger was silent most of the way, and even slept for a couple hours while we drove him to the one place he didn't want to go: Morrill Nebraska. It was a boring six hour drive back across Nebraska. David said Morrill was really not that far from Casper Wyoming, maybe we should go back to the hotel and have more of those wonderful Italian hoagies.
"How far?" I asked.
He said, "Just glancing at the map, maybe three hours."
"Would that get us closer to home?"
"Not really, no."
"Did you pick up the spider in that guy's house?" David asked.
I suddenly froze and realized I forgot about it. David reached into his shirt pocket and handed it to me, I switched it off and realized he should have turned it off so it didn't self destruct in his pocket. So we both screwed up. Our passenger seemed to be ignoring us all the way back.
He was taken into custody by city police and driven to the county sheriff since the city didn't have a jail; we completed a form for a $250 dollar reward, which I think came from Crimestoppers.
We spent the night in Morrill in our hotel room and left early in the morning for Omaha to return the rental car. It was yet another trip across Nebraska on I-80, I was getting tired of seeing the same ugly billboard signs along the highway. I-80 was like a sea of semi-trucks.
We got to Omaha and returned the car to Thrifty and walked to the terminal and paid for two tickets, but the best we could do that late in the day was get tickets for tomorrow morning to Dallas in a regional jet. We'd get home around 3pm, so we got a room at the Candlewood Hotel, which had a pool. The shuttle bus was sitting outside the terminal and we had a nice but short ride to the hotel. We learned Eppley Airfield in Omaha was built on a large sandbar; land that was designated a floodplain beside the Missouri River. It sounded like a bad idea to me, but what do I know? So any time the river had significant flooding the airport was closed, and that was a good idea?
We made it back to the terminal 40 minutes before our flight and boarded but enroute to DFW they said there were storms due soon in that area; we would be landing but connecting flights may be cancelled or delayed. We stayed the night at DFW and flew home the following day. I told the Captain I didn't want to go on any more jobs that required us to drive I-80 across Nebraska, we did it three times yesterday. We already had our report ready to submit and handed the OD a microSD card with a TXT file for her. She said the office was quiet because the Captain was on Fort Bliss at the gym for some kind of an older officer's physical conditioning tournament. We offered to buy her lunch and went upstairs to the sandwich shop and got what she wanted then left for home.
I carried in our stuff after he parked in the garage. The case got plugged-in and I ordered a new spider, battery, and gas pellet. I told her to warn the Captain because our car rental would be high since we did a lot of driving in Nebraska and the rates were high, plus we had an extra night at a hotel on the way home because of the weather. She said it didn't matter because it was a 100% covered expense. If it wasn't covered it had to be paid out of the office budget instead of Pentagon reimbursement.
After we got unpacked and cleaned-up we decided to cook our own dinner; we had lots of frozen stuff in the kitchen and, I decided to make a pot roast in the large crock pot with veggies. It would be done tonight around dinner time and make the house smell wonderful most of the day.
Everything went in the crock pot at 10am, done at 5:30pm. Carrots, potatoes, celery, mushrooms, and jalapeno peppers with a two pound well-marbled roast. We went out for lunch at 1pm on the Goldwing for Italian Hoagies at a place called Sam's Sandwiches on the far northeast side of town next to a gas station. Someone from work emailed me at home about a butcher shop on the far SE side of El Paso, out near Cattleman's. They sold locally raised, grass fed cattle, not pure enough to be organic but were raised and finished on grass, no antibiotics or steroids or hormones, just grass and water. After lunch we drove down there. We were the only English speaking people in the small store. Much of what they sold was wrapped in butcher paper and tossed in the freezer.
David confirmed that they took cash, then we spent almost $500 on steaks, roasts, and ground beef. It was more than enough to fill our deep freeze in the basement and the one in the kitchen too, the overflow went in the refrigerator. We kind of cleared out one of their freezers of ribeye steaks.
After two borderline inappropriate cases in a row we had a few weeks of silence, so we reverted to phys conditioning and working on annual re-certifications. Oh yes, one big thing we accomplished was we found a place online that sold nothing but backpacks and fanny packs, so we emailed them the dimensions of our Pelican case to have them search their sources for packs that size; I told them I wanted to buy twenty backpacks (to hand out as gifts to the other teams and their backups). We're waiting to hear back from them, but the search started across the ocean in Vietnam and China where most of them were made. Of course that won't address the issue of the Batsuit case unless we could convince the service to use a smaller one, similar to the current Pelican cases. Our Batsuit cases were thinner but larger around.
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