Reminder to readers: this story is 100% fiction. None of it happened, none of the people or places are real. Contact the author new email address: borischenaz at mailfence.
Chapter 30.
It's been ninety days since the surgery on my leg to repair the loss of muscle from the snake venom. The snake venom killed a chunk of leg muscle on the outside of my lower right leg, about the size of a ping pong ball. The surgeon cut out the dead tissue and pulled the viable ends together and glued them. Next, he did a chemical nerve block so those muscles couldn't contract, to let them knit together. Luckily, I was able to borrow the neighbor's dog, as my physical rehab walking partner during the day. We quickly became pals, and we trained him to run alone down the sidewalk (past seven houses), from their driveway to ours. Milo was owned by a family (husband/wife and two kids) seven houses west of us, but he wasn't getting enough exercise so we offered to walk him during the day to burn off some of his excess energy too (Milo was only fifteen months old). Someone in our neighborhood knew Milo's family and us and introduced us one weekend; it was mutually beneficial. They had a young high energy dog that needed exercise and I needed an exercise partner and someone to keep me company during the day while David was at work.
Milo had recently started to be home alone during the day and he started howling and chewing on their furniture. The vet said he was getting bored and needed exercise too.
Milo's mother would stand on their driveway and I'd stand on mine. Milo would see me and I'd call his name and clap my hands. She'd unclip his leash and Milo would race down the sidewalk and crash into me. I'd clip my leash on him and walk him inside after several very wet dog-style kisses.
Milo was such a joyful doggie, when he got inside his tail swayed so hard it wagged his entire butt end (tail wagged the dog). I never had to feed him but I had a large bowl with water and ice cubes for him; he loved crunching that ice. His owner said he was an AKC registered Standard Poodle; full size Poodles are great indoor dogs and usually easy to train, with a typical lifespan of around twelve to fifteen years.
I'll confess it's true that I never liked toy-size poodles, but this dog is wonderful with a fantastic personality. He's a little smaller than a Yellow Lab, but he's a bit thinner and doesn't shed. At a glance he looked like a lamb or a large stuffed toy animal.
And because he doesn't shed he needs a few haircuts a year, that's the trade off. But anyone could trim his hair with an electric trimmer. This dog is so cute when he's on the sofa in a pile of cushions he looked like a large stuffed dog someone won at a carnival. When strangers first saw him the wet black nose was usually the first hint he was alive. I also think he has learned that he does not look real so when strangers come over his first reaction is to remain perfectly still, kind of like ET hiding in the kid's toy closet when their mother looked around their bedrooms.
While Milo was over one day, some religious peddlers came to our door, we see them a few times a year, usually a group of well dressed Mormons. I was polite but declined to discuss my religious status or beliefs with strangers at the door. Milo stood beside my crutches and growled. Before they left I asked if they had a do-not-knock list and she said they did not. I wished them good luck fundraising for Jesus and they quietly left.
During my physical therapy I also worked in a (part-time) position they never filled called Airport Liaison, which meant I ironed out problems we encountered with airport management and Homeland Security/TSA. Sometimes during rehab I brought my motorized cart to the airport, which was when we realized this airport was out of compliance with ADA guidelines. They had no elevator to get from the ground level to the basement. During that time David had to park on the tarmac because it was at ground level with the basement.
I should say up front that very few civil airports were designed to house a military unit like ours and we had a constant stream of tiny disagreements over things, usually related to `Security Theater.' We actually created no more risk for airport security than their own employees coming and going, but they liked to complain about us because it looked like we weren't being inconvenienced enough. Airport admin believed working at the airport should never look easy or fun. I guess we smiled too much at work too. ELP sort of subscribed to the old Protestant workplace philosophy: the beatings will continue until morale improves.
Inside the main passenger terminal there were two secure doors to stairways that went to the basement floor, we could access either one by swiping our airport ID badges. One door was before the TSA checkpoint and the other door was after. They wanted us to be as inconvenienced by the TSA as other airport employees, but we often used the first door which was near the start of the TSA line. That really ruffled feathers but going through the checkpoint could create a potential for problems should a newly hired TSA x-ray screener tech sound the alarm because they saw explosives in our pelican case. That would shut down the airport for hours, so we bypassed the checkpoint to avoid trouble. We did not decrease security, we bypassed it, but admin felt we should all be equally inconvenienced (like the employees that worked in the food stalls near the boarding gates). It seemed to us the main goal of the TSA screening was to teach the slaves to be obedient and not question authority figures. OMG! We routinely carried live nuclear weapons and fully loaded machine guns around inside the airport every day but they wanted us to take off our shoes and stand in line with the other slaves.
If one of our people drove 12mph across the tarmac instead of 10mph (or less) it's kind of a victimless crime, like growing one pot plant in your basement in 1969. I got pretty good at defending us in front of airport admin. They had even purchased a police radar gun to document us driving 12mph, Ohhh! Felony barely speeding!
The DOD negotiated with the El Paso airport authority years ago for our office space, so the airport and the TSA knew exactly what we did and all about our military jets, our weapons, and they still signed the lease. We've discussed moving to Biggs Field but they don't have empty space, and building a new terminal structure for us would be super expensive. I think they were hard up for cash at the time they signed the lease with the DOD. We were told the airport authority and the TSA were literally told we hand-carried compact nuclear weapons and fully loaded machine guns in plastic luggage and backpacks across the passenger terminal every day, and that hadn't stopped them signing the lease. I heard that one person on the airport authority board who was told the entire story had to sign confidentiality under oath, before he was told about our gear. On the day ELP signed we already had airport offices in Atlanta, Indianapolis, Boston, and Pittsburgh for our other teams.
If ELP found a way to kick us out I suppose we'd move next door, or maybe further north to Holloman Air Force Base but they had five times as many days of runway closures due to weather than ELP. The most important reason why we came to El Paso International Airport was it had the lowest record of weather related runway closures west of the Mississippi River. We've heard ELP wanted the office space back; perhaps they won't renew our lease when ours expires in a few more years.
For the amount of money we're spending on rent (at ELP) we could probably afford to build along the tarmac on Biggs for less. Our floor space inside ELP is roughly 80'x100' and gives us a foyer, an open room (behind the OD desk) with a kitchenette, two small offices with windows, a conference room with kitchenette, four bathrooms, and doors opening on the basement hallway and another onto the tarmac. Plus we had a few large windows that looked out on the old tarmac area. Outside our tarmac door is a large open area where the HSCT jets parked and the airport parked luggage carts and tow trucks at night. Back in the 1980s it used to be where passenger jets parked before they built the new terminal. Our office area used to be where checked baggage was loaded onto carts and run out to the passenger jets. Our space used to sit under Gate-3 and now sits under two rows of cheap food and souvenir shops, just beyond the TSA checkpoint.
If we had to vacate ELP in a hurry we could probably use one of those temporary housing units like in the Green Zone in Baghdad. They used inflatable structures that set-up and tear down in a few hours. We could probably stay in one of those for half a year while a permanent structure was erected along the tarmac.
We've heard that Fort Bliss for years was on the national base closure list but then fortunes changed and an entirely new training complex was built so Bliss is off the chopping block for now. Bliss was one of the few army bases located in the desert in the CONUS, which made it perfect for training urban combat scenarios in the Middle East. As far as we knew the CIA would never stop trying to topple governments in that part of the world so a desert military training base would always be needed. David speculated that somewhere in the upper level offices at CIA was still a large portrait of the Shah of Iran, in a gold frame.
It would be difficult to train soldiers for urban/desert combat at a base like Fort Leonard Wood which is a huge facility in southern central Missouri, deep in the Ozarks.
In the past, Fort Bliss was home to Air Cavalry combat units, like the 3rd Armored Cav (aka: the Third Herd or 3-ACR -- now at Ft Hood). They gave up their horses and took up helicopters. This is part of the reason why Biggs Field was built. Today if a large desert combat unit is sent overseas they fly in and out of Biggs aboard the giant C5 cargo planes. Biggs is not the busiest airport in the world but it's suitable for large combat battalions to deploy quickly. I'm sure we would not disrupt their karma if we added a few tiny jet flights a month to their routines. Like I said, the bad part is we'd have to build our own structure along the tarmac.
During my medical leave David ran two missions with a guy from our primary back-up team in Omaha. As a private joke we called the guy Duke Danger, but Duke was his actual first name. The guy obviously took male hormones and steroids and acted like it too, he overreacted to stuff and liked to flex his chest muscles when people looked at him. He thought it looked cool, but people that were not testosterone addicts found it repulsive. His voice had that hoarse/raspy steroid abuser sound too. Duke looked and sounded like he should have been a wrestler or circus side-show act.
He seemed to be hoping every second of his life for people to ask him to take off his shirt so he could show off his muscles, but he looked like a circus clown. Anyway, he completed his training and did the job and hasn't gotten himself (or his partner Luke Luckey) killed yet. Duke and Luke also passed Seal school at Great Lakes, or as we called it: The Highly Hetero Hotel. If either of them moved into our full-time positions they'd still have to take BUDS training in South Carolina and Florida. Duke is about nine years older than us and Luke is 28, I think.
David and Duke had a mission in Los Angeles last week at a title loan company that escalated into a hostage situation. Duke drove the spiders but it took him nearly half an hour to find a way inside the building by way of the air conditioning unit on the roof; it would have taken me less than 80 seconds. David said he was ready to take a nap while he waited for Duke to find a route inside the building. Nobody was killed after the perp and hostage were gassed, then David and Duke strolled in the front door with an EMS backboard and carried the perp outside to a waiting police medical evacuation van. They had him tightly strapped down to the rigid board so he couldn't escape. Just to make sure he didn't move they even put a C-collar on him before carrying him outside.
After they carried the perp outside the building and down the sidewalk and into the van Duke suddenly collapsed on the driveway. The best we could tell was he didn't place his air filter correctly in his nose and on the way out of the building his fell out and he inhaled some gas and collapsed 39 seconds later. Rookie mistake! He said it gave him was one helluva headache afterward.
When their return flight landed in ELP David walked into the office, we made eye contact over the OD desk and I could tell he needed to talk, he was exasperated dealing with Duke. Since Duke also had Whispernet implants we couldn't talk about him privately; his implants were on the same channel as ours. I heard all our agents' implants were on the same channel to lower costs and for fun at parties. We could not privately discuss Duke if he was within 200 feet so we waited until getting home and in the pool. A couple times David went underwater in the deep end and screamed as loud as he could. That looked and sounded very funny.
Our boss's boss at the Pentagon had decided to 'split' the Omaha crew while I was on light duty. They brought Duke down to El Paso and left his partner (Luke) in Omaha and activated their back-up, a young Marine MP who was interested in our service but never attended BUDS or Seal school, but he passed all the background checks. Normally, he (William `Billy' Wylder) worked in security at Offutt AFB near Omaha. I think I heard he patrolled their perimeter with a dog five nights a week with a loaded 12gau shotgun. I've never met the backup team for our backup team because they're all in Omaha and we're not.
After Captain Johnson first mentioned bringing Duke down to El Paso David and I discussed offering Duke free use of our 2nd bedroom to save him some money while he was working here, but David clenched his teeth and growled, "NO! I DO NOT WANT THAT FREAK IN OUR HOUSE!" David even offered to pay part of his hotel room costs to keep him away from us. David said he was too unpredictable to trust in combat, and he didn't accept training well either. David said his vocal problems were self-inflicted because of his long term testosterone abuse. Duke's voice was weird and increased his overall off-putting presence. He paused to take in a deep breath then admitted he'd never want to get in a fight with him either because Duke was built like an NFL defensive tackle. He said he'd been lifting weights daily since he was ten years old, and it showed.
I softly asked if he saw any evidence of what Duke was packing. David said he believed Duke was probably hung like a Clydesdale, but doubted he could get a hard-on without taking two blue pills first.
They had success in LA with the hostage situation and then had another trip to San Diego to deal with a guy that tried to kidnap the wife of the mayor while she was at the grocery store. The perp had been stalking the Mayor's family for months and almost got her into his van and away from the scene but a few customers who knew her ruined that plan by pretending to panic during the kidnapping and struggle to wrestle her out of the store and into the van. We (our team) got called during the case to help nab the kidnapper's accomplice.
David told me at home he saw several pieces of evidence there was Mexican Cartel involvement in the kidnap attempt; Sinaloa clearly funded and staffed it. David said that as pot became increasingly legal, and less was smuggled into the USA, they invented other ways to generate income, and southern California was thick with celebs with tons of money. He described what he heard about how the mayor's wife struggled, and her non-stop screaming and kicking overwhelmed the kidnapper. She sort of collapsed and forced the kidnapper to carry her, which meant he couldn't fire his pistol and carry her at the same time, and then he had to fit her through the front door of the store, which was where he gave up, dropped her, pulled up his pants, and ran off.
The front doors of the old Food King grocery store were exactly wide enough for a standard shopping cart but not for a man carrying a woman in his arms, that's mostly why it failed. Other women ran at him and managed to pull down his pants while he slowly moved toward the exit door. Everyone knows you cannot run with your jeans around your knees. I heard the store security video was hilarious. I hope the folks in Sinaloa saw the video too to see how their dollars were spent, a real clown show!
For two more weeks I walked the dog (twice) daily, but when schools closed for teaching instruction days I lost my companion and walked alone, so one of those solo days I went for a very long walk all the way up McCombs to Transmountain Road and home again. There were several stretches on McCombs that didn't have sidewalks but there were several small strip malls that were downright ugly and attracted a rather sinister looking clientele. But I didn't have any problems. My next appointment with the physical therapist was in nine days, and I hoped she might release me to more duty, but maybe not full duty. I could feel it in my lower leg that it needed more time to heal internally.
Over time the glue that joined the muscle ends together was supposed to break down and new tissue would join the ends but it would be a fragile connection for a while. The doc said that was what was going on inside my leg right now. He said sometimes it would hurt for no reason but it would slowly improve over time. He said he's seen lots of lower leg wounds from snake venom before and they take quite a while to heal.
One week before I was released back to full duty I took the dog and some water and a squishy rubber bowl and we walked east out into the desert. We first crossed Railroad Drive and the tracks and kept going east onto Fort Bliss. You're not supposed to do that, but I brought my military ID card and a pistol just in case. There are no fences or signs that it's military property along Railroad Drive so they expect the occasional unwitting intruder.
I didn't think my four legged friend had ever been in the desert before. He was sort of an indoor dog that knew more about cable TV channels than the great outdoors. But it went well all in all. We hiked straight east until we saw the new Fort Bliss campus fence and turned around and walked home; just in case, I carried a small can of pepper spray too. There are a lot of wild animals living on Fort Bliss that might want to turn Milo into a juicy meal. As long as he stayed beside me he was perfectly safe. That's nearly impossible to teach any dog. It's like trying to teach a dog that the street is also very dangerous. We never encountered any large animals on our big walk but I had my pistol in my hand most of the time, as a precaution.
If a wild animal was going to attack us it would be sudden and severe, so I kept the pistol in my hand with the safety off. Actually, we rarely every enabled a safety feature on any weapon. We believed they were more dangerous with a safety enabled, because they gave a false sense of security.
Back at home I walked on the treadmill for an additional hour with almost no pain so I was convinced I was ready to return to duty. I still felt a little tightness in my leg but the surgical scar was well healed and the darkness was totally gone. And people said my limp was nearly gone too. The day after our long hike across the base I went to the walk-in clinic on the base to see if he would sign the release form. The doc was an O3, and I went on base in combat fatigues with the black cloth eagles on my lapels. I had to sit in the waiting room while he read my chart and called the surgeon for permission to release me back to work since I completed their entire recovery plan.
After I was released to a higher level of duty (work without the rigid boot and crutches) we decided to drive Duke back to Omaha instead of having him UPS all his stuff home. All his boxes fitted nicely in our truck and with two drivers it's easy to drive to Omaha in less than one day. The day we left David was driving and Duke was in the front passenger seat, I stretched out behind David and tried to take a nap. They blasted the music and talked non-stop all the way to Tulsa.
Since I've said so many bad things about Duke I should make it clear that he fully knew David and I were married and said he believed the states should not be involved in who gets married. He said, "Gays getting married did not decrease the number of hetero married couples. If less couples were getting married and raising children it was because of economics, not same sex marriages."
As we drove north into New Mexico we sort of gave him the tour of the towns and sights along the highway. When we got east of Roswell the terrain starts to look like the grasslands the rest of the way to Omaha. He said he never heard about the Dust Bowl in the 1920s-30s so we told him the story when we were approaching Amarillo. I thought that was odd, he said he was born/raised in Council Bluffs Iowa. I think I napped from Tulsa to Omaha, across the two back seats.
When you look at the Omaha metro area today it's hard to imagine it was once the western end of the USA. From there your only way to get to the west coast was by stage coach, and that could take months, if you even made it alive. Once the first railroad made it across everything changed. It changed world commerce too since people could ship valuable things from the Orient to California, across the USA by train, then to Europe by steamship.
About nineteen hours later we drove past the entrance to Offutt AFB then over to Duke's apartment. Duke offered to let us crash on his sofa but we left after a brief bathroom break since we were wired on coffee and psyched-up for this mega-road trip. All in all, our trip with Duke went better than I expected, he was not the redneck I always expected him to be. Yes, Duke was a bit odd. Yes, Duke was probably a steroid/hormone addict too. And yes, Duke was a tired old cliche (like Jack Lalanne) but he tried really hard at everything he did and seemed fearless, except around snakes and bats. I think the thing that bothered me the most about Duke was all that effort, all the work, all those years of pumping iron weights was done to influence what other people said about him. I suspected all that was being done to compensate for some kind of inadequacy he was trying to hide. Maybe he had a tiny dick, I had no clue, and I also didn't care. The sad part was his entire life seemed to revolve around his appearance, like he was a self-inflicted slave to some deep dark secret.
The sad truth was he was a legal drug addict. If you took those body building drugs away and stopped him he'd go through withdrawal just like a narcotic addict. I think he said he bought them in bulk in Canada, he had to drive to Winnipeg every few months to stock-up. We thought he was also a local dealer to guys at the gym, but all that stuff was legal in the States.
I saw Duke shirtless a couple times and I found him nearly as unappealing as Jeremy next door. His nips were very dark and tiny with ugly long hairs growing out around them. He would never spend a single minute to trim them. His belly button was a round lump, like it was herniated and in need of surgery and under his shirt he was pale white and covered with very dark moles. The only thing he was missing was a large tattoo on one side of his chest that simply said: MOM.
The drive back to El Paso started in the parking lot of Duke's apartment on Fort Crook Road in Bellevue Nebraska. For the first three hours everything was fine, then both of us started to get the yawns and David dozed off at the wheel twice, so I took over driving and David tried to get a hotel room in Topeka Kansas. He was on the phone trying to locate a hotel with an indoor pool (along the highway) but I guess that was too much to expect in Topeka so we picked a familiar brand name instead. The only amenity at that Best Western Hotel was free ice (when the machine was working). Luckily there was a restaurant within walking distance since we hadn't eaten since we left El Paso.
We both got steak and eggs (breakfast served all day) at a local diner. Two eggs scrambled, toast, two sausage patties, hash browns, a large waffle with two scoops of butter, and a thin but tender ribeye. We drowned our waffles with that cheap fake maple syrup that's chemically nearly the same as Coke but with maple perfume added along with a massive amount of cheap fake sugar. The steak was great, I scraped the butter off the waffle and put it on the steak and asked the waitress for more. On the walk back to the hotel we got a 12-pack of Coors Banquet at the gas station and a bag of pretzel rods and after a quick shower we got in bed and watched a good old movie on TCM called 'Crime School,' starring Humphrey Bogart, Leo Gorcey and Bobby Jordan.
Both of us were big fans of the Dead End Kids: Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Leo Gorcey, Gabriel Dell, and Huntz Hall. They were gifted child actors in the 1930s and often appeared shirtless in an era when shirtless was rarely allowed in movies, but somehow they got it past the Hollywood film censors, showing their smooth bodies to the camera often. Back in the Victorian Era people generally didn't display belly buttons in public or in movies. In that era people normally swam at public beaches with swimming costumes on to hide their bodies from view. Even in person people wore clothes that covered their belly buttons, judging by Hollywood films it looked like belly buttons on humans didn't exist until 1955.
David and I felt the Dead End Kids (aka: Bowery Boys) were sexy young men and very talented actors; too bad they all died decades ago. We both felt their movies were made for teenagers back in the 1930s, and maybe secret gays back then too. Bobby Jordan appeared shirtless in almost every film he made in the 1930s, and he looked great too. Apparently, the big film studios didn't like him; maybe he didn't go along with the casting couch requirements. It's interesting to see how the studio filmed them back in 1938 and 39. Bobby tragically died in 1965 at age 42.
The Bowery Boys were mostly born in the 1910s and 20s so it was safe to assume none of them were circumcised either. I asked David if it was okay to lust after a teenager who died over fifty years ago and he said it wasn't a sin after they died, especially that long ago!
We fell asleep with TCM still on the TV. I knew when one of us got up to pee the TV would get shut off. We hit the road the next day at 6:05am and made it home just after 11pm. We used our regular route by driving from Topeka down to Tulsa, west to Amarillo, south to Clovis, Roswell, Ruidoso, Alamogordo, then across White Sands to El Paso.
By the time we got home both of us were exhausted, stiff, and starved so I cooked us large veggie omelets (with Cheez Whiz) on the griddle, with toast and bacon. We ate at the bar on the tall stools and talked up a storm. While he watched me plate his food David got up and turned the control knob for the back yard blinds to fully open because they'd been shut for over a week and probably had a pile of desert powder on top. We switched the alert box over to 'on-duty and ready for action.' After the plates went in the dishwasher we went to bed. It's been quite a while since the last time we were both on full duty together. In the shower he said he was going to give me the nickname: Snakebite.
The next day at work at the beginning of lunch break we received a text from Captain Johnson about a special request from the CIA about an overseas case they wanted to offer. You might have heard it in the news too. According to the CIA:
In the western African nation of Nigeria there was an annual meeting of the top people from the militant group called Boko Haram; they've claimed responsibility for tens of thousands of executions across Africa, but stupidly their political conference (fund raiser) was held annually in the city of Kano Nigeria, and to make it more ridiculous it was covered on world news too! The CIA wanted us to go to Nigeria and detonate one of our nukes over their conference and rid Africa of the entire group. As soon as Captain Johnson finished reading the one page fax from the CIA, David stood up and softly said, "No thank you, no missions to Africa." Then I got up and we left the meeting without any further discussion. End of subject as far as David was concerned. Over Whispernet he said to me that was something the CIA had to deal with. They were the ones that wanted to rule the world, not us.
As soon as he said that we both stopped and looked at each other and smiled. I'm sure we both considered our back-up team from Omaha as suitable for that operation! We walked down the hallway and up the stairs to the main floor of the airport and stopped at the sandwich shop and ordered subs and bottled waters for lunch. He said he was certain it would be blamed on someone other than the CIA and called a terrible terror attack. I told him I thought it would be better done with toxic gas instead of a highly visible mushroom cloud. The body count would be much lower that way. We all knew the nuclear material could eventually be traced back to the very reactor where Daltonium was created, even though it was a closely guarded secret.
While we were eating David's cell vibrated in his pocket. I assumed it had something to do with Nigeria but it was an actual alert. We finished the last bites of our subs as we walked back near the TSA checkpoint and entered the unmarked door that went downstairs to the basement hallway. We moved briskly not knowing how serious the call was.
The alert was for a terror bombing in Saint Paul; a Christian book store was fire bombed, and one person killed, two seriously injured. It was on the national news and happened less than fifty minutes ago. David quickly declined after our last trip to the Twin Cities and how they refused to prosecute the three terrorists that killed over 20 people in the mall food court bombing. We left the office and drove home in silence. I had the image of our red faced captain in my mind when David quickly reminded him we had two cities we blacklisted so far: Dallas and MSP. David muttered those cities were full of game playin' morons.
David reminded me, "Three men exploded bombs at an indoor mall food court and over twenty innocent people died, and the three perps admitted on camera that they did it; they were also caught on security cameras placing and igniting the bombs, and the city decided to drop the charges because it might anger the rest of the Muslims. No, they can handle their own problems from now on."
On the way home my cell rang; it was the Captain. He wanted to discuss the case with me instead of David. He said it wasn't actually in Saint Paul, but in the far north suburb of Shoreview, which was a quiet residential town. He had me repeat things to David to see if he'd change his mind. It sounded like the captain already promised our help and didn't want to look like an ineffective leader. Finally, David agreed to talk to the local police chief about the town and what happened with the mall bombing, and how they let the three perps go free without any charges after killing twenty people, half of them were innocent children.
David was mad while talking on the phone and finally told him we would never come anywhere near the Twin Cities ever again. After he hung up he tossed the cell on the dashboard, pounded the steering wheel and shouted "MORON" at the dashboard. Then he reminded me that nobody in Minnesota knew all three of the mall bombers vanished without a trace while trying to flee the States. We had to dispense justice from our own retirement money. He shouted, "No, never again, we learned our lesson."
It seemed to make his anger increase just talking about the Twin Cities and our mental images of body parts on the food court floor covered in dagger-like slices of glass and steel skylight framework, and how some of them struggled to survive for days after the bombing but died of complications. He said those images were burned into memory forever and there was no way to recover those lives, even if the city officials apologized and publicly admitted they were wrong to drop charges against the perps.
I asked if there was any condition where he would change his mind and David laughed and shouted: "NO, NEVER! How can government officials ever think it was okay to drop charges against three men for the murder of over twenty innocent women and children? The only thing that even comes close to the evil of the perps is the soul of the people that let the preps walk free. That's why I can never go back there; those people were voted into office."
That was the first time we refused two cases in one day. It was also the first time that we got two alerts in one day. During training we worried we'd get multiple alerts per day on a regular basis. Thank God we weren't that busy.
After he cooled down he told me, "Pull that bombing shit in El Paso and you'll find yourself dead by sundown. And they don't care what color your skin is, justice in Texas is blind. Don't commit mass murder in Texas and expect to get away with it." Then he pounded his fist hard on the steering wheel, I saw tears in his eyes. The mall bombing in MSP had really upset him.
There's a good example of one of the reasons why I have so much respect for my husband. When we caught the mall bombing perps trying to escape the country he was totally professional at each execution. He never showed any anger or glee as we off'd `em. That's hard to do; it takes someone with tremendous self control and passion. David always stayed close by in the final seconds of their lives so they didn't die alone. I think that was his biggest fear in life.
After our lousy day at work when we got home I called the neighbors and then went outside on the sidewalk on my knees watching for my friend to race down the sidewalk and crash into me. I was met with licks and he sometimes gently bit my chin and lips he was so excited. I clipped the leash on him and we went inside. He went to the water bowl while I peed, then we went for a two mile walk while David tried to fix his attitude with laps in the pool followed by a nap in our refrigerator-like bedroom. We were gone almost an hour.
When we got back Milo hit the water and I used the bathroom. Then I walked him home and got in the pool but didn't take a shower first. We talked for hours in bed in the dark. David actually asked me if he was an asshole, of course I said no. I never would have married him if he was, but everyone has moments. I told him, "Everyone fucks up, that's why Milo needs to be on a leash, because he fucks up too." I don't think that made David feel any less guilty. It was clear our discussion after my snakebite pressed heavily on his conscience.
The next day they asked us to drive up to WSMR; our 2nd nuke weapon arrived and was ready to put in our pelican case. We'd been carrying only one warhead since San Nicolas Island. While we were there they told us they were working on a new launch tube that had a high power laser pointer to aid sighting the rockets, and to help the missile identify a target from its surroundings. But let's be honest, when it comes to nukes you don't have to aim perfectly, just close. The laser dot would help the guidance system keep a fix on the target in case it was moving or obscured.
We spent most of the day at WSMR and did some machine gun shooting on their outdoor range near the mountains. When we went shooting up there it was always with the gunsmith who maintained our automatics so it was always considered weapon maintenance even though it was also fun. We shot at paper targets for points then had lunch on the base in their little mess hall.
I whispered to David that if I was a young officer just out of college I wouldn't want to be stationed at WSMR because it was so far from everything, like Las Cruces, Alamogordo, and El Paso. But it would be a nice place to own a nice dual sport motorcycle, like 500cc or 900cc. They're out in the desert where the highways were mostly flat and straight. David said it would suck being 21 and perpetually horny out there, wanking alone in the shower every day, two or three times a day. Then we both said, "McGregor Range would be even worse!"
He said, "Imagine having guard duty all weekend, having to stay awake all night with nothing to do except sit and think."
"What do they have to guard out here?" I asked.
"Well, we know they occasionally get top secret weapons and test new missiles and ammunition. But posting a guard nearby only announces the presence of something worth stealing. I bet they use electronics and not Army privates to guard stuff out here."
I'm sure he was right. Both of us loved the desert and the mountains. My eyes were constantly drawn to them. Both of us were born and raised near the Gulf coast where there are no mountains so the horizon always looked like something was missing.
That weekend we celebrated the neighbor kid's 18th birthday. It came as no surprise when he said he only wanted to invite one friend from school over so they could party in our pool. His friend was named Shaun, he was also recently 18 and a senior. Both boys had well defined thumbs and struggled in social settings but with just two boys there were almost no pressures, boys are easy.
We encouraged Jeremy to design his party at our house. He also admitted he had a small party at home last weekend, with a cake, candles and his parents sung happy birthday to him. They gave him 40 bucks and a gift certificate for the web site he streamed a live combat scenario to his Xbox. I think he said it was a WW2 scenario he usually did with a bunch of guys from around the world against virtual German soldiers, sort of like the towns near Omaha Beach.
His friend Shaun was physically normal, he was just a plump teenager with a face full of acne scars and no clue about anything, except music and simulated WW2 combat. They got in their shorts and played in the pool for a few hours. About the time the sun went down the surprise was delivered, we got two large pizzas and some THC gummies (since they both admitted smoking pot a couple times a month).
We left them alone for the first couple hours while they played music and made lots of noise trying to drown each other in the pool. Once the pizza arrived things got quieter and we all sat down at our picnic table and chowed down. Jeremy introduced Shaun to David but not to me, but we met when they arrived. Both boys said they wanted to go to college to learn programming to write very realistic combat scenarios that were served online.
Jeremy said he was tired of people assuming he'd become a basketball player since he was so tall and skinny. Shaun said he was 5'10" and 220lbs. He looked like he never shaved in his life. I assumed he had a small dick too based on his overall shape. He had very dark brown flat tits that weren't very inviting, but his belly button was a huge gaping hole. Overall, we could see he NEVER sat out in the sun with his shirt off. But he was respectful, pleasant, and decent to talk to over the picnic table, even with a mouth full of pizza. I assumed Jeremy told him we were a married gay couple but should have kept his theories about what we did for a living to himself. But Shaun never asked.
Shaun left when his mother drove over at 8pm, Jeremy left at 9pm. We gave him a hundred bucks as a gift, but no card. He said it was the best birthday party he ever had: no rules, just fun and pizza. David said that was the first party we had where no alcohol was consumed. I asked him what we'd do for entertainment after Jeremy left for college in September. He said we should spend more time in the desert or maybe camping up in New Mexico. I told him we should invite Cousin Mark over once in a while, but he said Mark was in love and had no time for us since he met a suitable Senorita in a bar in Las Cruces. He said Mark would probably move up there next year.
Our next alert came two weeks after I was cleared to return to full duty. The request for help came from the Governor of Nevada. Contrary to the popular myth, what happens in Vegas never stays in Vegas. That era ended fifty years ago, if it ever actually existed. We felt the myth was created by an ad agency to promote business-class tourism and gambling in Vegas. With that myth in circulation it created a false belief that a married business man could go there for a conference and hook up with a prostitute and his wife back home would never find out, even if he got busted.
We anticipated that the place called Sin City would be the most frequent location for enormous crimes, like the sniper in the hotel window while the country music concert was going on outside next door. But since we opened the ELP office Vegas had always kept their city a mostly safe destination, but not very family friendly. This alert was for a serial shooter that was using rooftops to shoot individual pedestrians. So far eight people had been shot in twelve days. Each incident was: one shot, one corpse, no evidence.
Inside every shooting victim bullets were retrieved and the rifle barrel markings matched. The rounds were always the same size and type. The sniper was believed to be using a bolt action hunting rifle with a large scope. He was also a damn good marksman, and left no evidence behind. All the victims were shot in the chest and died before medics arrived, usually due to blood loss or kinetic energy damage to internal organs. They all appeared to have been targeted in the heart. Some of them died before they hit the ground, his aim was that good. The bullets he used fragmented on impact to spread the damage and the kinetic energy.
The lack of evidence suggested his rifle was disassembled and carried inside a metal briefcase, they're commonly seen inside casinos and hotels. It also suggested he was able to move around in the service hallways and access the rooftops without attracting attention. That suggested he dressed like a service technician with a company logo familiar to hotel staff. People recalled seeing someone but never reported it because his presence was completely routine and above suspicion.
We should say that due to the large number of private security services operating in Las Vegas there was easily more technology in use there than in most other cities in the world. The cops were two steps ahead of us before we were even alerted. Our call came from the Nevada Governor's office, asking for help stopping the killings. They knew we had access to the NSA databases in Utah without a search warrant, and that might solve the case (quickly). We were offered the option to drive instead of fly to LV so we drove. The internet said: 726 miles, 12 hours at the posted speed limit. The internet suggested we take I-10 to Tucson and Phoenix, then take US-60 from Phoenix to LV, a four lane divided highway most of the way across northwest Arizona.
Whenever we got calls from the western states governors the captain always reminded them our mission was to rapidly locate the perps and kill them if they admitted to their crimes. We rarely accepted cases where the probable penalty for the crime was less than the death penalty. There were only four states in our territory without a death penalty (NM, CO, MN, and IA). They were bluntly reminded of that fact before we accepted their case.
The highway across the desert (Phoenix to Vegas) was the one Marion Crane drove in the rain storm in the original 1960 movie: Psycho. It was also portrayed in the 1977 movie The Gauntlet, and probably others too.
In Vegas the city layout was simple. Interstate highway I-15 ran north-south down the middle of the metro area. South of downtown sat the airport, along the east side of I-15. The Strip (Las Vegas Boulevard was the spine of the area where all the famous modern casino/hotels and attractions were located) also ran north south and sat between the airport and downtown just east of I-15. It's actually not a huge area, about two miles wide and four miles north-south. Most of the major attractions were together in that small area, although it did bleed out into regular Las Vegas. If you were in decent physical shape you could tour the entire casino area on foot in two days.
Back in the 1930s (five years after their first street was paved and the first traffic light was installed) the center of gambling and drinking was in downtown Vegas on Freemont Street. Freemont intersects Las Vegas Boulevard in the downtown area where a four-block section is covered and closed to traffic, the street (an indoor mall now and) is home to the classic old casinos, the ones you see in promotional films and movies, places like the Golden Nugget, and Four Queens Casino. In all honesty, Freemont Street is loaded with homeless beggars, pickpockets, blinking lights, ultra-high prices, and has all the class of a circus side show or a McDonald's. Thank God none of the shootings happened downtown.
The city rented a few apartments for visiting VIP contractors like us. The Rays at Vegas Towers was a large apartment complex on East Flamingo Road (1063 E Flamingo Rd) at Claymont Street, just east of the casinos but near lots of restaurants and two blocks from the Atomic Museum. The apartment complex also had a nice pool and lots of parking. Neither of us were gamblers or great card players so the casinos (and shows like Brittany Spears) didn't interest us whatsoever. We've also heard that the food scene (huge cheap meals) on the Vegas Strip was mostly not true. Vegas is not a foodie paradise, since they also got most of their ingredients from the central valley in California where produce was grown in sand.
Produce grown in sand looked real but lacked flavor and tasted weird, so the entire southwestern USA mostly had lousy produce, but decent steaks. If you wanted a good ear of sweet corn go the Midwest during the harvest, not California, Nevada, or Arizona. Helpful foodie hint: Never eat corn on the cob out of season, or west of Oklahoma City. It looked real but tastes like cattle feed corn that was dunked in a bucket of sugar water.
We didn't want to stay on the Strip because that's where all the shootings took place, but the (free) apartment they offered was only one mile east of the Strip. We ran into the Nevada State Police Liaison officer in the lobby. When we walked in the entrance he walked up and flashed his badge, we shook hands. He gave us the nickel tour of the complex: the pool, laundry facility, and the elevators. We were staying in the far west tower, not the one beside the pool. We only brought one suitcase and our two equipment cases. We brought the pelican case for the benefit of satellite comms.
When he unlocked the hallway door our first impression was it looked very clean and had daily maid service like a hotel. There was a small kitchen and a balcony; it had wireless internet service and cable TV with a small TV in the living room and another in the master bedroom. It had two bathrooms with walk-in showers. The refrigerator was empty (except for two cases of bottled water) but the kitchen had three cases of Top Ramen and the stuff to cook about anything you wanted except a turkey. We walked out on the balcony overlooking the parking lot, he pointed out some of the nicer places to eat nearby, but we could only see east down Flamingo Road. Our apartment was on the 9th floor looking east so we got great cell signals and the pelican case worked fine too. The radio link showed a full scale signal coming down from the TDRS-West satellite. Las Vegas was similar to El Paso (cities in the desert surrounded by mountains) but not as poor.
In fact, let's compare: Las Vegas to El Paso as they are today (2018):
LV / ELP
Metro area population: 2.2mil/2.7mil
City limits: 142 sq miles/ 260 sq miles
Rank in the USA: 25th in USA/22nd in USA
Founded: May 1905 by railroaders/1680 by Spain
City limits population: 642,000/678,000
Tourist attractions: too many to count/ 4
History began as: stagecoach stop/place to cross the river
Industry: tourism-gambling/farming, military, murder, smuggling
Weather: both are cities in the desert but El Paso sits higher (3,800ft ASL) so it sees more snowfall and rain. LV sits at 2,000ft ASL.
Nearby cities: Los Angeles, Phoenix/none (El Paso is an island in an ocean of sand).
El Paso was surrounded by small farming towns that grew olives and cotton. If Vegas was like a shiny-new McDonald's then El Paso was like a small forty year old taco stand (near the entrance to a large military base) that hand made the best tortillas and never used artificial ingredients and everything was locally grown, their sign on the roof was hand painted. That's kind of sums up the difference between Vegas and El Paso.
During Prohibition El Paso was a great place to smuggle booze into the USA from Mexico. After Prohibition was repealed the smuggling switched from alcohol to heroin and marijuana. Back in the 1920s smugglers around El Paso used trucks and cars, but the total volume of drugs being smuggled into the USA today requires the use of steel shipping containers on freight trains. The smuggling today is protected by both governments and never mentioned on TV news or by politicians that want to live to see retirement. They want you to believe enough people smuggle bags of cocaine across the border in their socks that places like New York City and Chicago have never run out of narcotics since the 1920s.
We decided to walk across Flamingo Road to Five Guys for lunch but eat back in the apartment so we could talk. On the way back the state police guy started to tell us about the case (he was the lead investigator). He told us the sort of investigation he wanted us to do. This city police liaison was named Lieutenant Edward Dedmund; he was a career law enforcement guy with a master's degree in police science and a reputation for solving cold cases. To him it was a fun hobby he started doing when he was a child, reading his mother's true detective books. I could tell by watching David's face closely when he shook Ed's hand that he got a bad vibe and didn't trust him. The guy had white hair and said he was retiring in two more years and hoped to never see another serial killer case again. Ed said he wanted to spend his retirement reading books and playing golf a few times a week.
He didn't want to discuss what he knew about our service but said the Las Vegas Police needed our access to the cell network database, which also included (IOT) things like watches, tablet computers, online appliances, doorbell cams, and smoke detectors. He asked if our access included 5G services and David said yes, but that this database was still spotty but improving. David told him we also had access to digital 2-way (trunked) radio usage records, like the kind police, businesses, and municipalities used.
He said that first he wanted us to help clear their list of suspects by comparing their movements based on cell records. After we cleared out their suspect list we were welcome to join the stakeout teams around the strip. David and I already had other plans in mind but we kept that quiet.
Ed also showed us the summary done by a state police criminal profiler. The sad part was they had very little actual evidence despite having six full-time detectives working the case for eleven days. Their profiler's report said the shooter was likely: ex-military, between the ages of 26-39, employed part-time, no college education, probably Caucasian or African descended, athletic, and had very few close friends or relatives. They felt he was probably diagnosed with PTSD from service during the 2nd Gulf War when the US killed Saddam Hussein and invaded Iraq in search of the (non-existent) WMDs.
The only security camera images so far were two very pixilated images of a man carrying a metal briefcase across a parking lot. They also believed the suspect wore technical repair service uniforms and scouted his shooting locations well in advance and might have even flown low over the city in a helicopter in the past 12 months with a video camera filming rooftops. Ed said they already had one agent working on that angle alone but there were a few tourist helicopter services around LV, and all of them were seasonal. One LV detective suggested the perp possibly used a small quadcopter for evaluation of possible sniper locations shortly before each shooting.
David asked, "If you take a helicopter tour of Vegas do they make you surrender all your wireless devices, phones and watches before the flight?"
Edward said, "No, they all use well established routes and GPS based navigation so the airspace is very well controlled and 5G has never bothered it. Every service flies in well established corridors and there has never been an aviation accident in southern Nevada." We chuckled at his statement because it sounded wrong based on things we had heard.
We talked about the three most recent shootings while we ate; he handed me a map with the location of each victim and the estimated sniper position. In every case the Vegas Police found no evidence left behind by the shooter. He obviously wore clothing designed to avoid attracting attention. David looked at me and whispered, "Sounds like Dexter." Then I asked if the shooter could be in law enforcement and Ed Dedmund said, `We never ruled out any group but the profiler didn't think so. Nobody was above suspicion except young children, the very elderly, and the dead.' Then he added that the sniper was probably in decent physical condition considering his shooting locations and knew his way around the big casinos on the Strip.
I offered a comment about the guy seeming to know his way around the large Casinos and that seemed to indicate he used a familiar disguise (plumber, electrician, data/IT, housekeeping, security, elevator service, and hospitality).
After two hours of conversation and some delicious burgers he handed over our door keys which also raised the gate at the parking lot entrance. We exchanged cell numbers and David explained our need for a low profile with the police too. Ed wanted to take our photos but we refused which made him snarl at us.
He told us we were welcome to work with Delta Squad; they were a group of city and county cops working the Strip nightly (plain clothes) and were the group most likely to encounter sniper fire. Six of the eight cases so far were on Las Vegas Boulevard or within two blocks of it. He said they recently discovered that he only fired one shot, and also seemed wait for when a plane was taking off (the sound sometimes reflected loudly off the casino towers, but it depended on the wind direction). Ed said he would drive us to meet Delta Squad tomorrow for introductions. We asked for all patrolmen and 911 operators to be notified there were two plain clothes federal officers working the Strip too. Edward agreed to add that to the daily briefing notes as long as we were still here. He went on to say he might include our statement that we intended to solve the case in 24 hours, then he laughed and looked at both of our stone serious faces staring back at him. His joke flopped badly, we were very serious. Our intention was to have him on the slab ASAP; I guess he thought we were kidding.
We've seen this before where the cop that was the chief investigator felt his job might be in jeopardy if after hundreds of man hours we strolled in from out of state and caught the culprit in a day or two.
When he seemed ready to leave David reminded him in cases like this we killed the perp if he revealed secret knowledge of the crimes and confessed too. Ed stood there with one hand on the door knob and politely asked us to refrain from killing the suspect so he could stand trial, to send a message. After Ed left David said that sending a message never works. Cuba and Vietnam are both still communist countries and Meth still killed hundreds every year in the US, so making an example doesn't work. People that got off on revenge loved to make an example of a suspect, but it never decreased crime. Executing a guilty perp absolutely prevented them from killing again, and took them out of the gene pool too.
The CIA has been making an example out of Cuba since the late 1950s and it's nearly 60 years later and all that effort has accomplished nothing. All those poor farmers still drive around in cars built in the 1950s and a lot of people in the USA became very wealthy because of the cold war.
We spent the rest of the day drinking beers and combing through the data they provided and downloaded copies of cell site records, starting with the most recent first. I downloaded an FCC map of all the cell towers on the strip, it was a very crowded map. I told David they should rename the city 'RF Alley' instead of Las Vegas. He didn't even smile so I knew his brain was busy contemplating our research. I knew he did not like to work closely with street cops, they'd ask too many questions and expect us to buy their drinks after a 16 hour shift on stakeout. City cops usually believed fed cops got paid a ton of money, which was usually not true. Our own wealth came mostly from reward funds in Europe. Our standard Uncle Sam paychecks were not that big, look up the pay for an `O-6 over four years' in the army, that's our pay before withholding, which runs about 42% with insurance and uniform expenses.
After all our stuff was downloaded from the NSA database we changed and went downstairs to check out the pool (while duplicate files were forwarded to the OD). We couldn't see the pool from our room, it was on the back side of the complex. In the elevator I reached down his trunks and adjusted his dick to make it more visible and bent over to look in his belly button to make sure it wasn't full of lint. He was focused on his cell while I took care of his body. Then the elevator stopped and a bell chimed and the doors opened. On the wall straight ahead was a sign: ←--- Pool. It was a long walk down a long curved hallway, but at least it was air conditioned.
We had to rent towels from a lady at a cart that also sold drinks and snacks, no glass allowed. We got beers in disposable cups (like on an airplane) and bags of pretzels too. They didn't have regular Coors so we got regular Olympia instead. The lady at the cart kept trying to get us started on shots, but we stuck to our beer requests. The more she talked about their Tequila the more adamant David became that we wanted beer. Our door key cards were our proof that we were eligible for resident prices; and the charge went on the apartment account, not sure who would end up paying.
As we walked around the deck to a pair of unoccupied loungers we noticed the absence of other boy x boy couples. But we saw a few nice looking guys on loungers beside a bikini clad female. None of the hetero couples looked truly happy. We saw that frequently on Chaturbate, the hetero couples usually looked bored, and the biggest smiles were always on the same-sex couples. Most of the couples around the pool looked to be in their 30s and 40s. David whispered there were a lot of obviously enhanced breasts. Anyone could tell when they were reclined on a lounge chair since natural breasts flattened out, but fake breasts not so much. Our least favorite things people did to themselves were pierced nipples and belly buttons. David always said he never once saw a belly button (or nipple) that was made nicer looking with jewelry. And he felt a nose ring was the equivalent of having a large letter L tattooed on the forehead.
I told him we should start a tattoo shop in El Paso that specialized in big black L forehead tattoos, budget prices. We'll tell the kids the L stands for virility and intelligence, only the cool kids get the L. It's guaranteed to piss off their Baby Boomer grandparents too. Boomers are too old to understand true coolness!
We claimed the two loungers and dragged them into the sun then did a few laps down the long axis of the oddly shaped pool. After laps we stretched out in the sun for an hour and drank our beers. A while later David said a cockroach got in his beer cup and drowned. On the way back to the apartment he showed it to the kiosk lady and she dumped it and poured him a new one because his was nearly full. It was one of those huge city sewer-roaches that were larger than our spiders, and probably a registered voter too.
That evening we had the TV on the Weather Channel with the sound muted and discussed all we've downloaded so far. Outside we heard the occasional roar of fire trucks and ambulances racing down Flamingo Road. A very large hospital complex was a mile east of the Towers. It took me a while to fall asleep even with five beers on board. We slept in the same bed but never touched; assuming everything was being recorded.
David whispered we give them something to investigate on us, assuming the entire place was monitored, so we talked about card counting at the Bellagio and how easy it was with our new counting technique. I claimed out loud we had made thousands in cash that weekend. The truth was I only played blackjack in college a few times and usually sucked at it. I just don't care enough about cards to put much mental effort into playing cards.
I think we both got up and checked the refrigerator twice that evening before bed time but it was still empty (we should have ordered extra burgers). At shower time we took turns and kept all the lights off. I looked in the wall vents in the bathrooms but never saw any signs of cameras. While I was in the shower David did more research in the NSA data library about bugs and cameras in this apartment complex but found nothing. While we're here we'd behave as if the apartment really was sound and video recorded (it could also include RF sniffing and IR imaging). I also suspected they may know about our implants so they might not be secure either. Our tiny jammer would secure those from being recorded.
The radio signals from our implants were so weak they were never scrambled and could be intercepted by anyone within 100 feet of us who knew the frequency and had the equipment to demodulate the audio. They used a signal similar to USB on shortwave, but it was way more complex to eliminate static noise in our hearing.
Sunrise arrived early and lit up the entire apartment. When David got up to use the bathroom I called the OD with my cell (standing on the balcony facing the sunrise) to update our office on the mission. I told the OD we'd need help searching the NSA downloads, get them loaded into Excel now. I specified we all focus on the three most recent shootings and sent her all the search criteria. The copies I sent them already had the data errors fixed so theirs wouldn't crash because of corrupt data.
I also told the OD we felt everything we said in the apartment was being recorded, that seemed to be the norm in the Las Vegas area, and probably why we were steered like sheep to this specific apartment. I also suggested they call in reinforcements because it was going to be an intensive day or two on the spreadsheet and the phone. This morning's OD was a female Army officer. Later on she called in her math nerd daughter for help.
I turned around and walked back in the apartment and realized I paced in circles on the balcony in my white Haines briefs! Back at home we never had to worry about that stuff in our back yard especially if the overhead blinds were closed.
We got a list of the dates and times of each death from the Vegas coroner forensic reports, and then we compared police photos to the reports. I sent images of all that data to the OD along with the coordinates of the reported shooting locations. This series of shootings was one of the few in US history that left no evidence of the shooter at the scene. That suggested specialized clothing and training, unfortunately it also suggested a possibly botched or dishonest (police) investigation.
The locations of each shooting were ones that diffused the gunshot sound to make identifying the origin very difficult (each witness reported the rifle sound coming from a different direction). A key question quickly became: how the shooter got access to each location along with a hunting rifle. We were searching for suspects that looked like: HVAC, roofing, building maintenance, signage, city code inspector, cellular tech, elevator service, plumbing, and electrical workers. Soon after we started David began to suspect the locations used by the sniper might not be correct on the last three cases. Soon after we got moving in high gear the OD came up with the exact same questions as us. After the OD texted us with those questions I put down the police summaries since all the critical information was now in doubt. David mumbled that it looked like we'd be starting from scratch. I think all four of us suddenly realized our entire first thirty sex hours in Vegas was wasted. You could see the anger on his face but he never yelled.
At home I'd take advantage of his angry energy.
Over the years we've been doing this we developed Excel search routines that gave us the ability to define a circle on a map with a center point and examine only those cell records that took place within that circle during our specified time window. As far as I knew we were the only ones (in Nevada that day) that had that ability, except maybe the CIA. It took us almost three eight-hour days (four years ago) to write our search routines, and to have it ask for inputs and then run the search. Since then we updated the search program to add an animated icon to show it was working and not locked-up!
Originally, it was written in Microsoft Basic and made to import and read files in CSV format as long as all the columns were ordered the same way, which was easy to fix with Excel. Then over time we developed the same search in Excel and not as a separate piece of software.
When we downloaded cell site logs what we received were text documents that loaded easily into Excel, but they were enormous files. If we selected just one cell site on the Strip, for a 30 minute period of time it could easily have 20,000 lines, like for any normal Tuesday from 2pm to 2:30pm.
When we ran our Basic search program what it did was mark each entry in the 12th column with a one or a zero. Our mark indicated if it was or was not inside the target circle/time window. Then we ran the search on only those records with a one in the 12th column. But we always had to add the 12th column after we downloaded the records from the NSA server farm in Utah. Twenty years ago it might have printed out, and then some poor schmuck had to look at the printouts and hand-highlight any entry that landed in the circle during the time window. Today, our search program can take nearly 18 minutes to run a large file, or group of files loaded together into Excel. Before we ran the search we ran our file fixer on it to correct and corrupt data, then we ran our search program.
Our program was designed to search Unicode-8 data files, but if corrupt data worked its way into the NSA databases it crashed our search program so I wrote another routine and added it to the program. The first thing it does is look at the entire download file and any character (other than the characters found on a regular English American computer keyboard) the character is converted to a `?' so it doesn't crash the search program.
Eventually I modified our search program in Basic to examine the NSA data sets and create a new list; entries that fit all search criteria. It was slow but it worked perfectly. Needless to say, when we started a new case it usually required at least a few hours on the computer. If it was a really big case we split the search with the OD, which could reduce our time by half or more. Everyone took a piece of the total cell site data and ran the search, corrected corrupt data, and kept working until the search program ran perfectly. Sometimes you started it running and sat there for 15 minutes waiting for a result then it crashed and you had to fix the errors and start all over.
Most of our search problems came from locally owned cell towers that didn't follow the standard logging conventions. Their records often contained corrupt data that even our data fixer was designed to repair, like a missing column, or blank entries. If a person turned on their cell phone but the battery died while it was sending telemetry data to the local cell tower control channel it created a partial data entry. That was possibly one of the reasons why some cell phones were made so the battery could not be removed.
For missions like this one we often spent the first hour or two pacing around the computer waiting for results. We've also solved cases with first runs of our search program. David said he wanted to sell it someday, but nobody is supposed know about or have access to the NSA database.
We had reason to believe the CIA had their own version of the software we wrote. As far as we knew, none of our other teams had it (as far as we knew) and we had no idea how they handled these cases. These programs were probably a big part of why our group was the most successful in the entire service.
Three hours after the OD started searching the records she texted back that the official (police) time of each (of our first three) shootings might be off by as much as twelve minutes when compared to cell activity in the area. After the rifle shot and the victim falling to the sidewalk most people immediately fled the area, which appeared in the cell records, but the times never lined up. The discrepancy also suggested possible law enforcement involvement. She said she was also going to make a list of the first few officers to arrive on the scene too, including the coroner techs.
In the background I heard her daughter Katherine shout `Hi Ryan!' towards the phone before we ended the call. The OD said her daughter was home from UT Austin. In fact it was (17 year old) Katherine who was first to suggest the best way to ruin a sniper investigation was to corrupt the time data. And since most of these events started with a 911 call, altering the time on call center computers would be the best place to start. Once you shifted the time window the entire list of suspects changed.
In our office we made a rule called the Katherine Doctrine: "Step #1: establish an independent and verified start time." We printed it and framed it on the wall by the OD's desk, then started an education savings account for Katherine to make sure she could afford college tuition. David said he'd pay it himself if her family couldn't. She's homely and overweight but she's incredibly smart and probably autistic too.
We also had the OD search Vegas police records for stolen/missing service vehicles for the companies that would have unrestricted roof access, like HVAC and elevators. We also had them investigate high dollar rifle scope purchases in the past six months around Vegas. Luckily, there were not a huge number of gun dealers in Vegas (compared to what the number would have been if Vegas was in Florida). A sniper grade scope ($$$) was usually not a stocked item at most stores.
All purchases made with a debit or credit card were recorded and stored online forever. The record included what you purchased, where, and when. If it was with a bank teller or ATM transaction it included your photo and the type ID you used. Every time you go to a bank now they always secretly snap a photo of you and store it along with each transaction record. That's one reason why I always wore large sunglasses and a baseball cap in the bank.
The day went by quickly, the sun was above the western mountains before I realized we had missed lunch and dinner, so we stopped at 6:50pm and drove back to the apartment. David stopped at a Walmart on the way back and bought a portable clock/radio to make noise so we could sit on the sofa and discuss our research but probably not be recorded. We also purchased one change of clothes each, some laundry detergent, bathroom gear, and some microwavable food if we got the munchies late at night. Buying cans of Ravioli reminded me of being dirt poor in college, back when David (was 19) and could come five times before the sun came up.
If the apartment was bugged we felt the microphone would be placed near where people normally talked (kitchen table, living room sofa), so we moved the love seat into the large (empty) walk-in closet and made that our conversation room with the radio aimed out the door like a Cone of Silence (see Wikipedia: Get Smart Cone of Silence). The hallway closet had no AC vents (or electrical outlets), which were the most likely places to hide a bug.
That evening after showers we ordered delivery food: Chicago style Italian beef sandwiches and some sides, along with a 12 pack of beer. Our order arrived in 27 minutes. While we were eating the thought occurred to me to open one spider and have it survey this apartment. If there were funky electronic devices in use it might sense them.
I went in our room and got a spider out of the Batsuit case, and brought it to the closet. David watched as I carefully opened the tiny cardboard box and flipped it over and shook it until the spider landed on my palm. I handed him the box to destroy (he'd rip it into tiny chunks and flush `em down the crapper) while I turned it upside down and carefully used my fingernail to slide the tiny power switch to ON. He got up and turned on the pelican case comms gear so the spider could use it to process the ultrasonic measurements inside the apartment.
When you first switch a spider on, all eight legs twitch then it stayed motionless for several seconds while it loaded the software and tried to link to the pelican case and the Pentagon data network. It also connects to any of our gear, such as our forearm terminals, our glasses, and any local wifi networks. Then I gently set it on the arm of the love seat and let it do its thing to see what it found. From switch to ready is usually less than seven seconds.
The default settings on a spider were to initially surveil its surroundings and report back ASAP. It did mapping and sensing but those took a while. With our pelican case nearby and powered-on it would move quicker since it had more computing power. After the survey was complete it would take photos and then go into a power saving mode to wait for instructions. Lacking any instructions after the mapping was done they usually went to a hiding spot, like under a sofa or on top of kitchen cabinets.
It sat there motionless for several seconds then suddenly turned to face us. It raised one front leg and tapped the arm of the sofa twice then turned and darted down to the floor and started doing its initial survey. David said I was supposed to return the salute. I apologized for my lack of respect for military tradition. The only place I remember to salute is approaching our boss's boss in the Pentagon, but I never mean it.
This apartment was around 1500sq ft so it should take about 15-20 minutes, maybe 1/5 of the battery power. I put on my glasses and watched the wire-frame floor plan develop in sections as the lines for walls and doorways suddenly appeared. Then it added large items like furniture and appliances. It also marked windows and doors and any electrical fields it sensed, like the breaker panel or junction boxes inside the walls. If the electricity was off during the survey it would probably never locate the breaker panel. It sensed the power line in the wall from the refrigerator to the breaker panel. It also indicated radio fields like those from cell phones, routers, and anything that emitted radio frequency signals or electro-magnetic fields. They were amazing little machines, both of us were huge fans of the spiders.
When they survey a strange indoor area they located spots to perch and scan the room with ultrasonic beams to measure distances and sense walls, windows, openings, heat sources like humans and animals, and large items like furniture and appliances. The spider sat in one spot for a short time to scan each room from ceiling to floor, and then it moved onto the next room until the floor plan was complete. They often went to the ceiling in the center of the room and slowly rotated around while measuring the room and identifying key structures with ultrasound.
While `Spider0389' did the survey David loaded the final NSA downloads into our laptop. They all used the same comma delimited file format with data in the same order. Usually all we had to do was fix some corrupted data. One advantage of having huge corporate cell providers was they all stuck with the same data fields, but possibly called them different names, Verizon and T-Mobile used the exact same names and formats. We always had to enter the exact time, date, and locations of interest. After entering those specs we set the computer aside to search the data for the target records; which was usually a good time to do other stuff like blow each other or order lunch.
When we logged into the NSA server farm we had to enter the cell site ID codes and time/dates then the downloads began automatically, this was why we always had to first access the FCC cell admin map to locate the crime scene and the nearest cell sites. Cell sites had a three digit alpha-numeric ID code that you entered to access the records. We could not search on the NSA site; we could only download records. When we first started using cell site records it was pretty intimidating but over time we lost our fear of drowning in data. Now we can do our searches amazingly fast. The average American had no clue how much data is collected hourly by their cell phone, even if it's sitting alone on the kitchen counter. That is why we called cell phones: Slave Trackers. We felt all of us were wage slaves, and we willingly carried them. Most people knew they were tracking/eavesdropping devices but few people cared, they helped law enforcement catch bad guys. They also were used by corrupt governments to harass political enemies.
Keep this in mind: there is nothing private on a cell phone and the same goes for your home computer or anything else when they connect to the internet, zero privacy. Never have secret conversations or do private things in the same room as your cell or anything connected to the internet. When David and I are together after work I put my cell into airplane mode and turn it off.
This Las Vegas apartment complex used the standard type of HVAC system, the kind that made hot (water or steam) and chilled water. It circulated them around the entire complex in thick steel pipes. This allowed each tenant to adjust a thermostat for the desired mix of hot and cold to achieve the temperature set on the thermostat. This meant it wasn't actually air conditioned, just chilled. It also meant that each unit was heated and cooled by one large system for all four towers. That meant there were no hot water heaters, just heat exchangers. The tenants here could take an hour long hot shower and never run out of hot water.
All apartments in the tower shared a common air intake on the roof, which meant one common air intake duct, which was also a likely place to hide a microphone in a ceiling vent. If it was a long term microphone install they could disguise it as something else, like perhaps a sensor for smoke or temperature. Another famous place to install listening devices was inside smoke detectors or large electrical devices, like a TV. This apartment had nothing hung on the walls. David turned the TV around to see if the screws looked like the TV had been opened after manufacturing, then he unplugged it. Using the high chair we opened each smoke detector but found nothing abnormal.
During its survey the spider sensed an abnormal electrical field on the living room ceiling near an air vent so we drove the spider inside and found something abnormal, possibly the listening device and the wire that ran back into the ductwork. In the center of the living room by the air vent there should be no electrical fields, but there it was! We also saw what looked like remote control car tire tracks in the dust inside the duct; the installer would use an RC car to place the microphone.
All the other rooms checked negative except for normal electrical/magnetic fields.
After finding the microphone we decided to rearrange the living room. There was an infant high chair in the kitchen, it was put to use. We moved an end table to just below the living room air vent cover and set a kitchen chair on top. Then we set the high chair on the kitchen chair and set the radio on top of the high chair, the power cord reached a floor outlet for table lamps. So the radio was about ten inches below the duct when David turned it on to a Christian music station and cranked up the volume. Then we went back to the love seat in the closet, which seemed to be a fitting place for us. I loved being squished snugly beside my husband. We propped our legs against the wall and started reading the coroner reports and comparing them to the police reports.
Our time in close-proximity on the love seat reminded me of when we used to hang out in the back seat of his car, parked in a student parking garage on campus; it was the only place we could find privacy on campus. When I recalled those years back in college hiding in his back seat I realized again that we've been through a lot together and been together for a very long time, over a decade now. I remembered how hot he was in our first classes in our first year at UTA, and how badly I wanted to caress his skin and kiss his puffy Indian lips.
"Did you hear me?" he asked.
"What?" I shook my head and smiled at David. He was sitting close beside me on the love seat looking rather exasperated; I guess he was asking me something while my mind drifted off. He always suspected I was day dreaming about his tits whenever I checked out mentally. He was usually right too!
I apologized, and then we started discussing the most recent autopsy and the ballistics report from a few days ago.
That discovery was a huge accomplishment for us. We needed the time the victim was shot, not the time of death. David boasted that `...we were investigating the sniper, not the victim...' In some cases, death could have been 10-20 minutes after being shot as the victim slowly bled to death internally. He speculated that might have been why they had no suspects while we intended to solve the puzzle and halt the shootings that day. I felt embarrassed for not catching their mistake yesterday. Getting that fixed also sort of re-set our clock and meant we'd be here another day because of all the time we wasted.
In almost every murder and kidnapping case we worked we needed an exact time as the starting point of our investigation. In this case we forgot to do that right away because we blindly trusted the police reports. David claimed burgers and fries from Five Guys caused our fuck-up; the sudden rise in salt stunned his brain! I thought to myself how his six beers each were never on his list of possible causes! Gotta love his attitude!
I reached over and rested my elbow on the top of love seat backrest, I put my fingers on his wide red flat nipple and gently rubbed them around and around; I told him he was full of excuses but I still loved him. He kept his arm down so I could easily reach his chest while he went back to reviewing the autopsy report very closely. While I massaged his right tit I watched his lower belly for signs of a growing rod. David always said if his tit was rubbed correctly he also felt it in his dick. I could spend entire days messing around with his tits, but I was obsessed, he was not.
I called the victim's girl friend and identified myself; we spoke for over ten minutes. We told her we were feds investigating the shooting and she seemed eager to help. We both listened and I took notes: she was in front of him (standing on the sidewalk on the corner waiting for an Uber car) when the shot rang out. She was not only a friend of the victim but also the key witness. There were things in what she said that contradicted the police report so we asked if she could meet us there right now and she eagerly agreed. On the drive over we decided to make it a priority to establish our own time for each shooting. This was one thing David (and the OD) noticed, in the Vegas reports they were constantly alternating usage of the terms: time of shooting and time of death, as if they were the same. For some victims the times were the same -- the ones where the bullet exploded the heart. They were the ones who died as they fell to the sidewalk.
During our first few years together I prayed to God often, "Why did you give David the drink coaster size nips but I got the nipple fetish? David should have the nipple thing, not me. He was both proud and self conscious of his tits. Everywhere he went in life he always had the biggest boner and the biggest nips, I wondered what it was like to live with that confidence. He told me he hid his chest as much as possible when he was a kid in public school because of how he got harassed about his tits. Especially at places like the beach some adult women (Karens) would scold him for walking around with no shirt on. He hated that more than anything else. One time he confided in me that it might have been one reason why their family switched churches when he was in grade school and they had frequent family bus trips to the beach in Galveston.
The girl friend of the victim arrived in her car about the same time as us; we shook her hands and promised to listen carefully (David showed her his ID card and said I was his partner). As we walked across two streets to the exact spot David told her we drove up from Texas to investigate this crime at the request of the Nevada Governor's office, and that we were not affiliated with the local police.
"Yeah, I told the cops everything I saw more than twice and now you want to hear the same story again?" She asked. He explained we didn't trust the police notes and wanted to hear it from her perspective.
We both parked in the casino parking lot far from the flashing Excalibur sign and walked over to the exact spot where it happened a few days ago. She positioned David in the spot her boy friend stood; she stood on her spot and directed us to look down the street, watching for the Uber car. There were several other people standing on the same corner also waiting on app rides.
I asked why they didn't wait for the car by the hotel entrance and she said, "...they told us to go down the street because Uber was not allowed to use the little driveway at the hotel lobby entrance..." We assumed someone at the hotel got a kickback when the guest used a preferred taxi; they were the only ones allowed to load/unload outside the front doors.
The three of us were standing on the sidewalk at the intersection of Excalibur Way at Luxor Drive. All four corners were parking lots and just beyond them in almost every direction was a tall hotel tower or a parking garage. I stepped back and took about twenty photos of them, all the way around, to show what shooting positions were available to the sniper. On a street light pole above them was a sign that said it was the waiting area for Uber and Lyft drivers. There was a tiny covered bench there too but there were too many people waiting.
She described exactly what happened and how the other people on the corner freaked out and ran in different directions after he collapsed. We could still see the stain on the sidewalk where he collapsed and died. She said he was immediately unresponsive and never knew what happened. She described the echo but said the shot came from down the street toward the Strip, not the hotel roof. She was looking at the Uber app on her cell when she heard the shot and a moment later she heard her friend fall to the sidewalk and he already looked dead in the face. She said everyone turned around and looked at him but it was visibly obvious he'd been shot.
Someone at the corner said out loud, "He's been shot!" then moments later they all quickly left once they realized what happened. She got on her knees beside him and pleaded for help but everyone had scattered. As she told her story we saw her get emotional, tears appeared on her lower lip started to quiver as she fought back the emotions. I wanted to hug her but kept a safe distance instead. I'm not sure but she looked about ten years older than us, like nearly 40, and she had a nice figure too. David whispered to me, "Poor girl."
The report said the bullet entered his upper mid-back at a downward angle of 39 degrees, yet the autopsy photos seemed to suggest a much lower angle. There had been a group of people standing at the corner waiting for rides when the victim suddenly collapsed, and then a pop-sound was heard. But with everyone staring down the street for the Uber nobody saw what direction he was facing when the bullet struck him, because he was behind everyone and using his cell. I realized when she said that her back was turned (toward the victim) so her statements would not stand-up under cross examination in court. I don't think she realized the errors in what she told us.
David took a photo of the autopsy report's diagram of the body that showed the path the bullet took inside his chest, and then he mailed it to the OD because we didn't have a protractor with us to verify the angle; because it did not look like 39 degrees to us. My guess was they changed the angle in the report text to match the detective's assumption about that the sniper was located on the roof of the casino. They actually inserted a metal rod inside the bullet hole on the body and taken photos.
We immediately suspected their assumption that the shot was fired from the roof of the Excalibur was incorrect. David told her it looked like he was shot in the back but she said he was facing the casino. She said he was texting the driver and said he had to turn around because of the screen glare from the sky on his cell screen, which was when he was shot. David asked her how she knew he turned around and she said he'd been turning around all the time because of the reflection of the sky on his cell display since they got there, if he held the display in the shade it was easier to see. He did it dozens of times while they waited on the corner, which was also why he stepped further back from the corner, to try to get a better view of the screen. We stood there and talked for a few minutes and slowly walked together to our vehicles. She tried to tell us nice things about the victim but we changed the topic back to what actually happened; not if he was a fantastic person.
I think she was justifiably upset and needed to talk, but we didn't have the time for that although we didn't want to be rude.
Understand this: we've been doing re-investigations for a long time. When we realize our witness had a hard time staying on point we split up, David stayed with the victim since he's the charming schmoozer and I continued to occasionally inject questions to accomplish our goals. It's a version of the good-cop bad-cop routine but few people can resist David's charm school routine. He always plays the good cop; I always ask the painful questions. We don't even have to discuss it ahead of time because we always fall into that routine; it's like an act for us.
One time I told David was going to buy him a cop uniform and have him wear it so he could forcibly arrest and search me in the bathroom.
After (Valerie) the girl friend left we walked around the area and took photos then walked down the block to the very large, 86 foot tall Excalibur sign in the parking lot across the street from the hotel entrance. On closer examination we found it had an internal ladder and platforms for repair techs to reach the electronics inside without needing a tall lift truck. We got the information off the sign and went into the hotel to speak with security; luckily the head of security was in his office, but unfortunately he was also a low-information asshole (aka: spared the ravages of education).
Our meeting did not go well. He first said the investigation was complete and he was not authorized to speak to anyone about the matter, and that we should contact the city police. Then he told us to leave the hotel property immediately. It seemed our investigation uncovered a sensitive area so we decided to focus much closer on this location and on this man. The chief of hotel security was named Howie Schultz. While I was arguing with him David called the OD and gave her Howie's name and told her to add him to the list of possible suspects. I`m sure he heard me spell his name over the phone. I wanted to take his picture but didn't want to trigger him even more. We could easily get his photo off his driver's license records.
The OD reminded us he was likely just exceedingly stupid and not involved in the shootings. Guys like that tend to get David a little upset, especially when they think that talking like Billy Bad Ass is going to alter anything we do, except smash their face in the dirt. I thought to myself, "We're legally authorized to shoot you dead where you stand and you're going to talk to us that way? You are really really stoopid, you just don't know it."
We drove our truck across their parking lot and parked beside the huge sign. Then we made a few more calls while a hotel security guard stood nearby watching us with a walkie talkie in hand. I got out of the truck and took detailed pictures of the base of their sign and the ID plate that listed the sign company and their phone number and texted those to the OD too.
The hotel security guy used his intimidating `dad's angry voice' to tell me not to touch their sign and ordered us off the property or he would have us arrested. I held up my hands and softly told him "I've not touched the sign, just lookin." While I had the truck door open David shouted to him to call the cops and we'd have him arrested for interfering with a murder investigation. But he insisted that we leave their property. I told him it would be better for him if he went inside the hotel but he (glanced down to make sure he was standing on hotel property) refused, so I angrily told him to call the police immediately. I rarely do stuff like this but I stepped rather close to him and screamed as loud as I could: "Right fucking now!" And then I shouted we were not leaving and the best thing he could do was to walk away, or risk spending time in the city jail. That was a bluff because we could not order Vegas police to arrest people; they had to witness his law breaking. But we could arrest him ourselves; the problem then would be that he would become our focus and not the murder.
I think that us talking to him with that tone was probably not one of our smarter ideas; he called for back-up and also had someone in the hotel call police (the hotel tries to avoid having police on the property). We sat there making notes (about the sign) and I took more photos of it and asked the guard, who had now been joined by a second officer, how tall the sign was and if there was a hotel room that I could go inside that had a view of the top of the sign. It was very hard for me to concentrate on our investigation and pretend to be upset with the poor security guard. Actually, our suggestion that he should walk away was for his best interest because we had the authority to kill him on the spot with zero liability. The biggest problem at that moment (for me) was my mental focus.
Four long minutes later a Vegas city police car arrived (no lights or siren) and parked close behind our truck. I walked over by our tailgate and bent over and physically pointed to our license plate. To make it easier for him I (again) pointed out the sticker on our license plate and the duplicate one beside it on the bumper. He seemed to recognize them and approached me between our vehicles (wasting more precious time) and we handed the officer our Pentagon ID cards and told him we were working a federal serial murder investigation for the Pentagon. He took our cards back to his car and talked to his dispatcher over the radio.
Two minutes later he handed our cards back and walked over to the two hotel security guards and they spoke briefly and then both of them walked across the street to go into the hotel. I shouted at the first security guy and asked (and gestured for) him to come back, I still needed his help. Lt. Ed (who we'd met yesterday) had said all patrol cops and 911 dispatchers would be told there were two plain clothes federal agents on the strip doing an investigation; this cop seemed know about us but wasn't entirely certain what to do in this situation.
The hotel wanted us gone and we wanted to advance our investigation... whose rules would win became the question of the hour. Unfortunately for the casino, at that very moment we out gunned everyone (the security peeps didn't know that). But I think the city cop knew we outgunned them by an enormous margin and he wanted to go home alive, so he backed-us up in the furtherance of busting a serial killer. If it had gone any further I was prepared to get out my machine gun and demand what I wanted. We had enough firepower inside the pelican case to destroy half the Vegas Strip, and turn it into a large smoldering pit.
If they had physically stopped (detained) me we had comms-on in the pelican case and within five minutes the Nellis AFB MP unit would have been dispatched. Seven minutes later they would land in the hotel parking lot with two Huey helicopters and killed all of the hotel and police involved. And then our investigation would have continued. We try really hard to avoid escalation but sometimes it's unavoidable, particularly with some of the egos we encounter. When we accept a mission like this one the OD has to notify the nearest military bases and put their MP units on stand-by. Nellis knew we were coming before the city police knew. Nellis AFB is in the Vegas metro area on the far northeast outskirts.
I asked the hotel security guy, again, to suggest a hotel room number higher than the 10th floor on the side facing the sign that would give us a view of the top. We turned and looked at the street side of the building then he got out his walkie talkie again and stepped further back while I stood by the sign waiting to hear a room number from him. He came back and said he was not allowed to assist us; so I nicely asked the Vegas uniform cop to assist me inside the hotel, and that it would only take a few minutes; I had some photographs to take from a window. The city cop said "Easy enough Colonel Malone, let's go." I told him David would stay out here and make sure nobody touched his car. The cop laughed and we turned to cross the wide marked crosswalk.
We walked in the main entrance, ignoring security's orders to leave, and took the elevator to the 14th floor and established where we were in relation to the sign; I pulled out my small lock picking kit and selected a door to knock on.
Would you like to know what we learned about lock picking in school? In most cases it's rather easy with some practice.
Lock picking is fun and easy, there are videos on y-tube. It takes two tools, a pick and a wrench. You first establish what direction the lock cylinder has to rotate to unlock the door. Next, you inserted the wrench and applied gentle rotational pressure in that direction. Next, with the pick you pushed each pin up and down to feel for when the pin was in the unlock position because each one allowed the cylinder to move a microscopic amount; you feel it move. Once all pins were properly aligned the wrench loosened, the cylinder rotated, and the lock opened. What it proves is that traditional locks with keys and cylinders are very insecure. Some people used a tool called a Rake to rake all the pins while applying pressure with the wrench and on cheaper locks that often worked quickly.
The padlock manufacturers that showed their locks being shot by a high powered rifle but still not opening are confusing you into thinking their locks are secure when they are actually poorly designed junk. Any lock with a straight key is usually simple to pick. The weakest part of any lock is always the mechanism that is rotated by the key, but they never say that on TV.
Hotel rooms here used card slots but each one also had a key slot for housekeeping. We knocked loudly on the door to room 1403 and got no answer so I got on my knees and quickly picked the lock and opened the door. Yes, the room was vacant. The room was very neatly made and it looked like housekeeping was the last person in the room. The cop stood in the doorway while I walked to the window and moved the sheer curtains aside and looked down at the street, fourteen stories down.
From the window I took several photos of the sign and several zoomed into the top of the sign, it was about sixty feet below and to the left of me. Then I unlatched and slid the window open and took the same photos again, plus a few looking down the block toward the spot where the victim collapsed and died a few days ago.
On the top of the sign was a 2'x2' access panel for sign repair techs to access the decorative structures that looked like castle adornments on both ends. In my mind I pictured the sign probably had a basic steel frame inside with lamp sockets and interior ladders, but it could also provide an ideal sniper spot; we felt the shot came from the top of the sign and not the hotel roof. My theory was he placed a step-ladder, climbed up inside the sign with his metal case, climbed to the top hatch and pushed it up and propped it part way open then barely peeking over the top he watched for people standing on the corner waiting for a ride. He assembled his rifle and got ready, then when he heard an airplane take off he aimed and fired, striking the victim in the back from about 500 feet away. After that was done he closed the hatch and stayed inside the sign until the scene was completely chaotic then climbed out completely unnoticed and drove away.
David was outside on the phone with the sign company while I was inside the hotel pissing off their security guy. We were actually only in the room for about fifty seconds. I closed the window and put the white sheer curtains back in place, then walked around the beds and out into the hallway and closed the door. I thanked the police officer and we took the elevator back to the lobby and left via the main entrance doors. One hotel security guy followed us the entire time.
I immediately saw David beside his truck, still on the phone; we made eye contact as I crossed the street with the cop. I thanked the officer again and he walked over by the hotel security guard, who was now back, standing near our truck.
During his phone call one thing David discovered was most signs with internal ladders all had locked access panels and all of them around Las Vegas used the same key! I told David I got my pictures and then explained what I was doing to the city cop; he shook his head in disappointment at hotel security. They were obsessed with two plain clothes agents on their property and ignored the murder that happened beside their parking lot. They didn't like even the appearance of an investigation on hotel property where guests might see us and decide to never come back.
The only law enforcement actions the casinos never hid were those relating to cheating on the casino floor, all the others were kept quiet. I just wanted to capture the Vegas Serial Sniper. It seemed to me a dead body in a puddle of blood on the sidewalk was much more visible than two plain clothes men taking pictures out of a window.
We heard the city cop tell the two security people that if they were called again (regarding us) they would be arrested for interfering. With help from David I picked the lock on the sign and both of us climbed up inside; it was very bright inside since the sign was fully lit 24/7. Climbing into the sign without a ladder was tricky but we were used to that because of our transport jet. Usually, a sign repair tech would arrive with a six foot ladder but we only had each other to get from sidewalk level up inside the sign. David boosted my foot so I could grab the bottom rung of the internal ladder, and then I climbed up inside. Once I got in position I reached down, he jumped and grabbed my hand and I lifted him inside too. That was the only time we left the pelican case alone in the truck.
We climbed up the internal steel ladders looking for evidence of it having been recently accessed. I reached the top hatch and looked around and saw a used piece of pink bubble gum and some cigarette ashes and two butts. I gathered them into tiny plastic bags which I put in my pocket after having taken about fifty photos inside the sign. I never opened the hatch on the top, all I had to do was turn a large handle to unlock the sign and push up on one side, but there was no point.
The top of the sign was smooth curved sheet metal, like roof of a car so any evidence on top would have blown away or rolled off days ago. Later on we walked around the base of the sign closely looking for evidence on the ground but it was clean, the sidewalk was swept and hosed down daily. This shooting was almost four days ago. I wondered if there might be a spent rifle cartridge that we couldn't see in the plants around the base.
Up inside the sign it was very hot, probably around 105. I had a thought that the way this sign was built to replace bulbs they loosened and leaned-in a section of sign exterior and replaced bulbs by hand then closed it. The sniper might have fired from inside the sign and not on top. He could have loosened the screws on one panel and leaned it inward then stabilized the rifle against the interior frame and fired without any rifle barrel being visible from the outside. The echo of a jet taking off would provide additional cover making it nearly impossible to pinpoint a noise source.
We search the inside bottom of the sign for any shell casings but found nothing. Due to the design it was impossible to see every place a casing might land. It's likely he fired but never ejected the spent round, and if he was a veteran that would take some serious self-control to not eject and chamber another round.
I packed the evidence and we drove to an office supply store and overnighted the evidence to El Paso, and then we drove to the next shooting site.
When you picture modern casino signs you think they're maintained by men on ladders or lift trucks. But the larger ones were now maintained from the inside so the sign crews no longer worked on public sidewalks with ladders. Modern technology told the sign company when there were light bulbs out and they dispatched a tech overnight to change bulbs and the casinos were no longer involved in their signage (except paying the bill on the service contract).
We also learned that most of the large light displays and signs in Vegas were built and maintained by one very large/old company! And most of them used LEDS instead of light bulbs or neon tubes. If the temperature at the lights exceed a particular value then they're switched back to ordinary light bulbs, because LEDs can't take extreme heat for long.
The drive wasn't very far. The next victim we investigated was also shot on a sidewalk at the intersection of MGM Avenue at Audrie Street. He was spotted face-down on the sidewalk by a passing motorist, so the exact time he was shot was unknown. EMS reports said he appeared freshly dead, his body temperature was still in the upper-90s. The shooting happened early in the morning when it was 85 degrees outside.
This 4-way intersection had an elevated monorail train station, a ballroom roof, and a six story parking garage. This location was surrounded by places that offered concealed positions. We first tried to discover why he was in that spot and where he was going. Our goal was to accurately determine his exact location, which direction was he was facing, and if possible the exact time he was shot. We considered that he may have staggered briefly before collapsing on the sidewalk.
Let me explain something that's kind of gross but it's important to this story. We generally trust reports by the paramedics because they see the shit every day. When a human dies there are instantaneous and permanent changes in the way their body looked, especially in the face. Experienced paramedics know the look of death well; it applies regardless of your race or age. Few people come back to life once they get that look. Some medics call the look: Elvis has left the Building! However, in most states paramedics cannot make the medical determination that someone is dead. This is why news reports say things like: the person was pronounced dead at the hospital (because the paramedics cannot legally do it, only a doctor can), it's also why some medics say, "Nobody dies in my ambulance." They mean the patient must be treated by the medics as if they have a chance at life and are transported to the hospital where the doctor can immediately say "that guy is dead, he's not even warm, and he's stiff as hell." The only time a paramedic may get involved in the pronouncement of death is when there are obvious signs of death in the corpse (stink, swelling, stiffness, and temperature).
Back to the investigation:
The best we could initially ascertain was that the victim was standing at the southwest corner waiting to cross with the pedestrian crossing signal. He just had gotten off the monorail and left the platform, down the stairs to sidewalk level. He was an environment tech and was enroute to the one-story ballroom building to run the carpet cleaning machine. It appeared he was shot from less than 100 feet (per the ballistics report), which moved the probable location from the roof of the ballroom to the third level of the parking garage. Part of that level was restricted to hotel employees and contractors. There was a badge operated gate inside the garage to keep the public from using parts of the third or fourth levels.
We illegally parked on the street (two tires up on the sidewalk, two on the street) and walked inside the parking garage stairwell and searched the upper floors that faced the monorail station. It took us an hour and we had a shouting match with an MGM hotel employee who called to have us towed but I convinced him we were the cops; then he shook our hands and left after we told him we were from Fort Bliss. I think my comment about Bliss triggered his PTSD so he left quickly to go be alone for a while. I mumbled to David how much time we lost every day dealing with poorly trained security people. David said it was our cross to bear. When he gave me that chicken-shit answer I called him a martyr and he shoved me back against a concrete pillar. If we hadn't been working a case I might have fought back, but I just chuckled and made an L shape with my hand, and smacked it against my forehead, our gesture for LOSER!
I stopped to ponder what I would do to get even with David tonight and when I looked down I saw another piece of bubble gum, same pink color as the one inside the sign. I handed him the plastic baggie but he told me to get it myself. After taking photos of the location I coaxed it inside the tiny zipper top bag. We closely examined the area for more evidence. David wrote a number on the 2nd gum baggie since we now had two of them. I wondered if a parking garage mouse might have scurried past and stopped to sniff and lick the gum and left his DNA on it too. Maybe a pigeon picked it up then dropped it too, we heard them all over the garage.
We were standing against the concrete wall looking down at the site of the shooting victim across the street, maybe 80 feet away and then up and down the street. David took a bunch of additional photos around the garage and looking down on the street. We watched a few monorail trains stop at the station straight across from the garage. I had no idea Vegas had a monorail transit system, but there it was. We paused to see if the traffic lights at the intersection had red-light cameras but didn't see any.
We called the OD and had her access the report for this victim and read us the section on probable shooter location(s). The cops came up with the roof of the ballroom across the street, which was a one-story building used for things like weddings or large private parties that needed to be near a large parking garage. The cops picked that location because it had ample HVAC equipment on the roof to provide visual cover for a shooter. With the enormous MGM hotel very close it meant there were potentially hundreds of hotel rooms with a bird's eye view of the crime scene.
If the guy was walking from the train station to the ballroom when he got to the corner he had to take an L-shaped route crossing both streets at the intersection. We went to the platform and walked both routes, crossing two streets to enter the ballroom via the rear entrance for employees. Guests would use the main doors, which faced the parking garage. Our task was to determine which way he'd cross so we could tell which way he faced when the bullet struck. Many people rotated when struck by a bullet, but it was important to figure out which way he faced initially.
"I got it!" David shouted.
"What?"
"I know how he crossed."
"What?"
"Here, he faced this way and crossed here then over there." He said moving directly behind me. He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me to face the corner of the parking garage and extended his arm over my shoulder and pointed at the pedestrian entrance to the enclosed staircase on the corner of the parking garage. I asked why.
"See, when he came to work the sun would be in his eyes straight down the street," He pointed down the street to show where the sun would be when he arrived. "He'd cross right here so the garage blocked the sun. That's a big deal when you live in the desert, right?"
I stood there looking at the corner of the parking garage, then down the street and agreed. Then he swung his arm to the right and pointed at the car entrance of the garage. "He got off the train and walked down the stairs and stood right here to wait for the light, he might have moved slightly so the sun wasn't in his eyes, then the shot rang out and he rotated to the left as he collapsed. The coroner's research showed the angle of the bullet hole matched the level of the third floor of the garage. When the bullet impacted his sternum it put rotational energy into his body and caused him to turn, which made it appear the shot came from the ballroom roof. I patted his shoulder in admiration of his deduction (while David took more photos with his cell, the dark blood stain on the concrete was still visible in the cracks) and we jogged across the street, and left in our truck for the UPS Store and started another overnight package for the second piece of gum. While he handled that I called the OD to let her know we needed DNA evidence from both pieces of gum ASAP, regardless of cost.
This time we called our liaison with the Vegas police (Ed) and updated him that we had physical evidence and a different bullet trajectory again, but he was on his way home after a long day. I said we should have preliminary DNA results before 3pm tomorrow if the packages arrived on time. He asked what evidence we found that the entire Las Vegas Police Department missed but David didn't answer and told him we'd keep him updated.
We also had the OD call the wife of this victim to find out what time he left home that morning so we could determine which train he took; which would tell us what time he was shot, down to the minute. Before we had left David had timed me walking from the train platform down to the corner. The OD already determined which train he had ridden on so we were easily able to fix a time he was shot, down to a 30 second window. The Vegas cops never figured that out and went by the temperature of the body when the coroner arrived with his fancy metric meat thermometer. After a few more photos we decided to quit for the day.
On the way back to the apartment we called the (first shift tomorrow) OD at home and asked him to intercept the packages tomorrow and deliver them to the testing lab near UTEP on the west side. Most times when you asked east-siders to drive to the west side it was answered with grumbles, because the west side of El Paso was like a totally different city, even the terrain was very different 'over there.' It's a hassle driving over there too because you had to drive around the Franklin Mountains, which often meant driving on I-10 and that was never fun.
Because of the shape of the city and the borders El Paso was literally squeezed into the far corner of Texas and blocked to the north by the New Mexico state line. In the middle of all that sat the Franklin Mountains (a north-south line of granite peaks). The east side was relatively flat but the west side was hilly, rocky, and had roads with steep inclines in places. Downtown El Paso sat south-west of the mountains and through all that ran several train lines, I-10, city streets, border bridges, a lot of factories, and a new border highway that was also under construction. Driving to the west side was a hassle unless it was 2am. What El Paso needed was a six lane (east-west) tunnel that went through the Franklins near the VA hospital.
That evening we were pleased with our accomplishments and hung out at the pool and ordered delivery pizza with beer in cans. By the time our food arrived we were the only ones on the pool deck, it was 9:05pm on a week night.
After our wonderful pizza we spent fifteen minutes deep tongue kissing in the deep end of the pool since it was rather dark. After that we walked back to the apartment, showered and went to bed. I wondered what the maid thought of the radio on the high chair in the middle of the living room with loud static blasting (it's possible she knew the apartment was bugged). We were kind of surprised she didn't put everything back where it went, but the bed was nicely made.
After we got under the sheets in the ice cold bedroom we softly discussed the case.
"Why?" I asked. "I don't get what motivates people to shoot strangers without provocation."
David breathed deeply then said, "I think they all have reasons: festering inner anger, overwhelming boredom, serious mental illness like severe psychosis, recreational drug use causes some people to go nuts, and even some prescription hormone meds can cause people to slowly go berserk, especially younger women taking male hormones."
"To me it just seems like killing innocent people for no reason takes a lot of work with no reward except negative attention. Maybe I'm just too lazy to be a serial killer." I shared.
"Let's not forget good old demonic possession." David added softly.
"Both of us kill criminals but never enjoyed it." Then I turned my head to look across the pillows but it was too dark to see much except that he was beside me. I softly reminded him the only reason we killed people was to prevent more bloodshed, but a few times it was also for retribution. I'm sure we both pictured the three guys that did the food court mall bombing in MSP.
I added, "If we hadn't off'd them all three guys could have easily murdered innocent people again; that's why they were voted off the island." I was going to ask him if sky burial was `permissible' but decided not to, we both needed some shuteye.
"It's weird how this case started out with no crime scene evidence, because in both cases they identified the wrong shooting location. No wonder they found no evidence!" David mumbled that it was a bad for the people of Vegas to have such an inept law enforcement group.
With his face pressed into the pillow David mumbled, "We'll air him up tomorrow, then we can go home, love you."
At 5:57am the OD called and woke us. He wanted to know how long we expected to be in Vegas, I said we might leave here this afternoon if the perp confessed. Ten minutes later he called back and said the captain had just left for the shipping terminal to intercept our envelopes. The jet arrived before dawn and dropped off their next-day stuff and had to accompany the large bag to the sorting area where they were manually unloaded and run through a bar code scanner to direct them to different delivery routes. Almost thirty minutes later he signed and drove em to the testing lab on the west side and had them start right away, we wanted a DNA profile, blood type, gender, and any major diseases (STDs, HIV, hepatitis, diabetes, etc.). They had a package of tests called an offender profile,' it covered most of the tests needed by law enforcement.
The captain sat in the crowded (smelly) waiting room with people arriving to take pre-employment drug tests. The OD said he delivered the packs to make sure the testing service gave it priority service. He waited for a prelim report on paper.
'Type-A blood, male, STD -, and it lit up big-time for untreated type-A diabetes. That suggested the person was sickly looking, slender, and possibly his breath smelled (fruity) like he was drunk on wine all the time. He also had type-A blood group, which was the rarest. Same test results for both pieces of gum.' He called us with it immediately, and we called it in immediately to our police liaison and he sounded very grateful. We said we'd have his DNA profile later today but what we had now was enough to get a start.
One hour later we got a call while we were on the strip investigating the third shooting site. The police crime data manager said they had several partial matches but one came closer than the others: a blood group-A male, Type-1 diabetic, slender, worked as an electrician, and he had a previous arrest record and general discharge from the Army for repeated STDs and behavior problems towards officers. We got the suspect's name (and DOB) from the Lt and called the OD to get his address and cell number so we could locate him. The data technician said they only had partial information on him; it didn't have his address or contact info, he was not currently on probation or parole.
We left the casino area and drove to the suspect's neighborhood, which was straight east of the airport, 4173 Lucas Avenue; he was sharing a rented house with a group of transient young men. The residence was in a decent neighborhood that was less than a mile from the end of runway 26R, so it was the lower rent district, if that was possible in Vegas. My instinct suggested we might run into armed conflict if we stormed the residence. So it was time to send in a spider!
If I've said it once I'd said it a thousand times: God bless the people the invented our spiders and the little old ladies in Nevada that assembled and carefully packed them in tiny one cubic inch cardboard boxes.
We parked in their neighbor's driveway and got the used spider ready to go. While we drove across town (about 2.5 miles southeast of our apartment) the OD called his workplace pretending to be his worried grandfather. H&L Electric Contractors Inc said he was not scheduled to work today. We could not tell from the neighbor's driveway if anyone was home next door. The OD did basic banking checks (most recent debit card transactions) and we located his cell device which was powered-on but sitting motionless inside the house next door. David carefully turned on the pelican case and the spider we used yesterday to survey the apartment and inserted an extra battery and a sleep gas pellet.
I put on my glasses and opened my door. I leaned over and gently dropped the spider on the driveway and shut the door. Being dropped from the height of the floor inside David's truck onto concrete has never broken them in the past, but the truck can't be moving. We've dropped them from even higher places if they're going to land on sand or grass. Onto tall lush grass they can usually survive a six foot drop, but grass is very hard for them to cross. They told us in school to avoid grass.
Step-1 was to drive the spider manually under our truck to the sidewalk, down the sidewalk and up the neighbor's driveway. In this neighborhood the homes sat very close together, maybe ten feet from wall to wall with a fence down the middle.
Step-2, I drove it up the outside stucco wall of the house to the roof and down the nearest vent pipe and took the first turn and ended up in an upstairs bathroom toilet bowl. We could easily find the toilets because they had the largest pipes and no grease build-up. I saw daylight inside a standard commode and crawled out and went straight to a hand towel by the sink to clean the spidercam lens.
These spidercam lenses are coated so droplets usually vanished within seconds of emerging from water. But sometimes we picked up specs of hard water residue which appeared like tiny brown flakes that stuck to the lens. The spidercam lens is only 2.5mm wide so even the tiniest flake can block nearly half the image. We've asked Nevada to add a routine to self-wipe the lens but so far they haven't done it. We can find suitable things to rub against but moving the spider body side to side while pressing into a towel or clothing is very hard to do with a joystick or the arrow keys. We had to resort to running into a towel or laundry on the floor to clean the lens but the software tries to avoid bumping into things so we really need a lens wiping routine added to their software. Since we were live with ELP I told the OD through my glasses to call Nevada and remind them we really need that routine added asap.
Step-3, survey the entire 2-story home (assuming we were going inside too), that took nearly twenty five minutes but the basic upstairs floor plan started to appear on the tablet computer in about five minutes. The people in Nevada that designed the spiders said that surveying a 3D room with a 2D camera and ultrasound emitter-sensor was much more complicated than we realized, especially considering that a door might easily appear the same as a bare wall. Finally, it finished the upstairs and started on the ground floor. David wondered it maybe it wasn't getting a good signal from the pelican case considering where they were situated.
It located one living human and a pet cat inside; the person appeared to be asleep on a sofa in a TV room. It also detected bunk beds in all three rooms upstairs and this place might have been used as a flop house for students and recovering homeless men. I started to receive spidercam photos of the inside of the house too.
Several minutes later I received two photographs of the person who appeared to be asleep on the sofa near the TV. For a few minutes the spider was stalked by the cat but it never attacked. The photos were sideways, I forwarded them to the OD and she immediately said it looked like our suspect, the nose, eyebrows, and hair color were a perfect match with his driver's license. I called the police liaison to update him. He said they had almost no evidence to arrest anyone so we told him we were about to discuss the sniper shootings to see if he confessed, but the cop said not to as it could ruin their investigation. Ed said it might take weeks to assemble a good case against the young suspect.
David reminded Ed if the perp admitted doing it we'd probably kill him to protect the people of Vegas, but the cop wanted to surveil him while they built a case against him.
David commented to me that since the murders started they've collected no evidence except a stack of improperly autopsied corpses. We really had no choice if he confessed. We tried to end the call but the cop was angry and shouting and wanted us to stop but we refused, stating that 'this is what we do to serial killers.' David hung up but the cop called back immediately to continue arguing. David tried to convince him that more of the same failed police work would only produce more of the same useless results. I told him to tell Ed our mission was to protect citizens from dangerous people, end of story. David told him we were going to do what the Nevada Governor asked us to do, and then he hung up. We told the OD to be sure to record video and audio from the spider and our comms. This would be one of the few times we allowed our final moments with a serial killer to be recorded. When we did it there would possibly be dozens of people watching so we had to be careful and strictly follow the guidelines.
I drove the spider near the front door and had it visualize the door knob to see if it was locked. Then we checked the back door, which was a (locked) sliding patio door. About that time we silently got out of the truck and inconspicuously walked down the sidewalk to the next driveway, then up beside the garage and sat in the shade against the outside wall while the spider finished mapping the house.
Step-4 (time to enter), we found an unlocked garage window. I helped David slip silently inside then he pulled me in too. The two car garage was a sea of boxes, like the storage area for a homeless shelter. Then we left the garage and ended up in the laundry room, then into the hallway near the kitchen. We left the kitchen, walked silently past the cat and entered the living room.
We found the suspect on a sofa in a large downstairs room. The house looked like a group home, the living room was set-up like a day-room with two sofas and three recliners in front of a large flat-screen TV. The trash cans were full of empty beer cans and wrappers from fast food places, like Wendy's only a few blocks away. David looked at me then at the Wendy's bag and made a `gag me' hand gesture, I smiled back. David liked to say that if your teeth were all rotted and missing Wendy's was great because their food was all soft and mushy.
While standing silently in the garage I drove the spider around the house to the garage door and saw nobody. When we returned to the TV room our suspect was gone from the sofa and the downstairs hallway bathroom door was shut and the exhaust fan was on. We silently got into position on either side of the door, flat against the wall. I sent the spider under the bathroom door and got under a cabinet beside the door where the perp wouldn't see it from his perch on the throne. I gave it the command for a full shot of gas and checked the time. About twelve seconds later he hit the floor, we heard and felt the heavy thud.
David set the timer on his watch and we stood there for seven minutes then unlocked the bathroom door with a knife blade in the slot, then we waited for two more minutes. He asked me what his guy's name was and I told him I didn't remember. I had seen it on his driver's license but forgot. I thought his last name was Kanji something.
When we entered the bathroom the scent of sleep gas was gone. I picked up the spider and set it on the counter by the sink so it saw everything while David dragged the young man across the tile floor so his head and shoulders were on the tiled shower floor. When he woke up he'd be half inside the shower, looking up at the ceiling.
I put double plastic ties on his ankles, wrists, and knees while we waited for him to wake up. David added more straps to join his wrists to his knees and about six minutes later he opened his eyes. He wanted to know who we were and why he was tied-up on the bathroom floor, and said he had a horrible headache and could barely see. David told him he was under arrest for the eight Vegas sniper shootings.
At first he seemed stunned and didn't know what to say. So David asked him why he did it and he blurted out, 'Because I could, A-HOLE!' Then his face turned weird, he appeared to be pulling hard on the plastic ties and then quit trying. After a moment of quiet David tried to talk to him again.
"You surprised we found you?"
"Fuck you pig!" he shouted. David glanced at me and told me to aim the spidercam lower. I picked up the spider and held it in the air above the guy's body for a birds-eye view of him on his back on the floor. Then he asked, "Were all eight of them your work?" And before he could answer David added, "Dude, you're pretty good with a rifle!"
He smiled but still looked angry, and then he boasted about being the best shot on the rifle range when he was in the Army, and that he always scored the highest in his company. David nicely told him we'd like to check out his rifle, and he said it was under his mattress upstairs, then he told David we sounded like a couple of big city fags too. I immediately set the spider down on the toilet tank and ran upstairs to locate the murder weapon. David discussed details about the eight killings (exactly where he shot from) with the perp while I went room to room lifting mattresses looking for the hunting rifle.
The spider recorded the perp discussing details about each shooting and it contradicted some of the data in the police report and profile. David whispered an update to me after he confessed secret details about each of the eight murders; it's recorded in the pelican case too. But the one thing he never said was why he picked any particular person; it sounded like he selected the best target in each location but his choice wasn't based on anything like appearance or behavior.
When I found his bed I whispered to David, "I got the rifle and a box of ammo; it's the same caliber as all eight victims." All combined he gave us more than enough for a lawful execution. I quickly went back downstairs to the bathroom with the rifle and ammo box in hand. I showed him the box, how it matched the ballistics report on every case. Then I held out the rifle and showed him the ID plate stamped on the side that showed it was the same caliber as the box of ammo. David glanced at me and nodded yes, which I took to mean he was going to air im up' soon. I moved sideways so the perp couldn't see and reached in my pants pocket and got out the knife and silently opened the blade, I'm sure David heard the muffled click when it locked in place.
I carefully set the rifle on the counter over the sink (I never checked to see if it was loaded) and gently picked up the spider and aimed it at the scene and told David I was ready. I was directly behind him holding the spider in the air looking almost straight down.
He got on the floor beside the perp as if he wanted to get closer and intimately talk about being a marksman. David complimented him on his choice of rifles and ammo. The perp described the ammo and how they were designed to inflict a lethal wound, the round would never leave the body because it turned into tiny shards of lead and made no exit wound. David moved one hand to his lower back and I carefully placed the knife handle in his hand exactly how he needed to do the rapid jab. Our prisoner said in almost every case he got the heart shot he wanted so each one was dead before the body hit the ground.
David let the perp finish what he was saying then changed the subject and told the young man, "You know dude, when we were out in the garage we saw two big fuckin' spiders out there; they get in under the garage door y'know." The perp started to look freaked out lying on the bathroom floor. David moved even closer on his knees beside the perp and gestured at the shower floor and said "They get in through the drains too, like that one." The guy wiggled sideways and turned his head fully to the side, which put his neck in the perfect position and also moved his common carotid artery closer to the skin, both of us saw the bulge.
While the guy was looking around the shower floor David quickly stabbed his neck, I saw it penetrate his flesh half way to the handle, in and out in a fraction of one second. The perp struggled violently against the ties and shouted, "Fucker that hurt!" Then they had a silent moment when the perp realized he was leaking massive amounts of hot blood down the shower drain. During that quiet moment when they stared in each other's eyes we all heard the sound of blood gurgling down the shower drain. The odor of fresh blood filled the air.
David quickly got to his feet to avoid the bigger spurts, while I held the spider above them. The perp struggled against the plastic ties again and looked at both of us but ignored the tiny spider in my fingers.
Most of the time when David stabbed someone in the neck it took less than half a second and the perp never saw the knife, most never even saw David move. Our intention was to do it as quickly and humanely as possible. Most of them had a few moments of quiet contemplation once they figured out they were moments away from death. There was often a time where fear faded and they realized they had seconds left and the situation was irreversible. I think our calm demeanor kept most of them from hysterics and it was almost a bonding moment between us. Most of them also stopped talking since they were deep in thought. David stood all the way up and dropped the knife in the sink.
The angry expression on the perp's face gradually faded, his eyes followed David's every move. The perp appeared to spend his final moments deep in thought, judgment day had arrived and he never even got the chance to wipe his ass. David got up and washed his hands and the knife in the sink, I got down and felt the pulse in his wrist get weaker then it stopped, so did his breathing.
Inside our bodies is a blood pressure sensor, if you lose a lot of blood that sensor makes you faint so your final moments are usually always unconscious. That happens to most mammals on Earth. Most people cardiac arrest due to blood loss within twenty seconds of being stabbed by David. We could use other arteries but this one always worked well for us. Our team in Atlanta preferred the aortic arch, but it's harder to reach because of the ribs and the depth. The aorta caused a quicker demise than the one in the neck and the blood often stayed inside the person's chest cavity. They had the risk of stabbing the rib and having to pull out and stab again, we had no bones to worry about in the neck, just soft tissue. Our double sided knives were kept razor sharp. It bothers me just having one in my pocket.
We used folding Zombie Slasher pocket knives, our agents in Atlanta preferred a custom short sword like thing about as long as your hand from fingertip to wrist, with a combat-grip handle. Their pointed blade was thin and sharpened on both sides. Theirs was essentially a ten inch long double sided razor blade with a handle. And their blade was custom made in Japan and cost a small fortune, ours came from Ebay but we re-did the actual blade edges at a machine shop at WSMR. But we maintained our knife blades ourselves at home on the kitchen table with two sharpening stones.
We decided to leave via the sliding back door but I paused to turn off the spider and drop it in my shirt pocket (I still had latex gloves on my hands). Back in the truck we called the OD but he had watched the live feed on the computer. So I called the Vegas police liaison officer to tell him their serial killer was dead. We taped his confession and details about all the shootings, found the weapon and ammo and executed the perp. When he started to ask questions David simply hung up the call.
From there we drove back to the apartment without much conversation. Ed never called us back; we never told him where the guy was located because someone would kind him soon and do that for us.
We half expected to be arrested for something at the apartment complex but nobody showed up. Captain Johnson told us later they called him to complain but he reminded them they called us to stop the killings and find the perp, which was exactly what we did.
We carried our stuff downstairs to the back of the truck and left Vegas. We left the apartment door key cards on the kitchen counter. David took a paper towel off the roll and wrote 'ED, YOU'RE WELCOME!' It might be nice if they called and said thanks for doing their job for them and not telling the media they had a serial shooter. Could you imagine what that story would have done to the Las Vegas economy if it hit the national news? We brought home the little clock/radio to use in our garage, but we left their love seat in the closet.
We left the apartment parking lot and drove east on Flamingo to Boulder Highway which took us to I-40, then we drove east to our next stop: Albuquerque New Mexico. I kept an eye on the outside mirror half expecting to see a state patrolman come up behind us with his lights on, or an airplane make multiple passes overhead. Nobody followed us and nothing happened but I was sure both of us kept an eye on the rear view mirror expecting to see lights. When we got to the Arizona state line we sort of forgot about being stopped and detained. Once we were in Arizona on I-40 we took off our glasses and turned off the pelican case too.
We took turns driving east on I-40 to Albuquerque instead of through Phoenix and Tucson. There was a burger joint on I-25 in Hatch New Mexico we liked and wanted to pass through Hatch during business hours. They had a half pound burger stuffed with grilled/diced green chilies in a green hot sauce with Cheddar cheese on top, and served with something like a small bloomin' onion and dipping sauce. It was expensive but very nice and they always had a line to get a seat, even at the bar. You really had to eat their big burger with a fork and extra napkins.
On I-40 we stopped every two hours to use a truck stop bathroom, stretch our legs, and drink some water. We decided to stop for the night at a hotel in Albuquerque (570 miles from Vegas, 8 hours driving time) to time our arrival in Hatch for around 11am tomorrow, to maybe beat the lunch rush.
That night we stayed at a small/cheap motel along the highway (no pool), two full beds in a standard motel room. That was the first time we had the chance to have sex in almost a week. After we showered he walked around the motel room with a bright red boner; I could barely take my eyes off it.
I tried to grab it when he walked by the bed, but he batted my hand away.
"What are you looking for?"
"Didn't we bring a packet of fuck lube?"
"Oh yeah, they're in your bathroom bag by the sink."
He went back into the bathroom then came out as he used his teeth to rip open the packet, while I set the alarm clock for tomorrow morning. He stood by the bed and carefully dribbled the edible oil while I got into position on my back with my knees pulled up to my chest. He dribbled the rest of it behind my nuts and smeared it over my opening, and then David slowly inserted himself. I already rinsed myself in the shower so I was clean and ready. I always packed a small enema bottle in my bathroom kit.
David rode me hard from above that time but didn't last long. I think he went about five minutes then pulled out and spurted across my stomach and chest. I loved the feeling of his semen on my skin. After he was done he went back to the bathroom to rinse off the sweat in the shower, we shouted across the hotel room about lunch tomorrow. While he was in the shower I used paper towels to wipe myself dry.
When he walked out with the towel around his waist his rod was still about 50% hard so I got between his legs and worked him with my mouth for a while and made him come again. After that we fell asleep. I fell asleep on my side between his legs, his lower belly and thigh were my pillows all night, I slept with my face inches from his dick and balls.
The next morning we arrived in Hatch at 10:39 before the line formed and got seated right away at the bar and ordered the #1 item on the menu. Chili stuffed mushroom and cheese double burger (half pound) on a toasted white bun with steak fries ($16 per person). I thought the grilled Hatch Chilies tasted a lot like a grilled green bell peppers. An hour later we staggered outside and patted our tummies as if both of us were six months pregnant and got back in the truck. At Hatch we're only about 100 minutes away from our driveway. On the drive yesterday from Vegas to Albuquerque I rough drafted our report and finished it before we got home.
This burger place in Hatch has a large collection of other corporate restaurant statues, like the Big Boy burger kid, Ronald McSimburger, KFC, and more. They have a very large Uncle Sam Statue holding a green chili out by the parking lot and there is an even larger parking lot across the street. Their main character is a 1940s robot (looked slightly like the one from the Jetson's); the entire place is very retro. Sparky's is on Franklin Street in Hatch, about one mile from I-25. Coming up from El Paso we always take exit 35 at Rincon NM then take the back roads to Hatch. That entire area is also totally in the Chihuahua Desert.
I told David we should ride the Goldwing up to Hatch soon; its only three hours round trip. He agreed we should on our next weekend off. We've eaten at that burger place almost every time we drove up I-25. What we should do is bring ice packs and bring two home and try to figure out how to make them ourselves.
We never heard any more reports of sniper shootings in Vegas after we bled the perp. After that mission we took several days off, which was always allowed after days on the road and because we often worked nearly 24 hours a day during missions.
On our first night back home during the night I had a dream about the shootings and suddenly something popped into my brain and I sat up wide awake and got out of bed and went into the Tac-room and fired up my laptop and started to review all the crime scene photos we took. We never got the chance to review all eight sites, but of the first three something really weird suddenly became visible. My heart pounded and I went through them over and over and it was true, so I transferred about twenty photos of the three most recent sites onto an SD card and dropped it in my pocket and went to get David.
Back in our bedroom I sat on the bed beside him, he was asleep on his stomach. I leaned over and kissed his head, my nose pressed in his thick black hair. He smelled wonderful to me. Slowly he woke up and wanted to know what was going on. I got him up and on his feet. In our undies I escorted him to the basement and sat him on the sofa in the dark. I walked over by the treadmills and pulled down the screen then fired up the projector and the media player. Next, I inserted the SD card and found the remote and sat close beside David. He sat there not talking, as we both stared at the pictures we took a few days ago of the last three shooting sites. All the shots I showed him were ones taken from near the spot the shooter was when he fired at the victim, except for the one on the top of the sign.
"I noticed something in a dream. Look carefully, there was something huge we missed on all the sites." I let the media player step through all the photos. "What? I don't see anything special." He mumbled on our third time through them. I asked, "What are the things the sniper needs to know before he pulls the trigger?"
David was quiet briefly then said, "Distance, elevation, wind, target composition." I told him he was correct then said, "Knowing that now look again at the photos."
I leaned over and kissed the side of his face then stood up and walked to the screen and waited for it to switch to the next image and I pointed at what looked like a neon pink strip of plastic, like surveyors tie onto survey markers on property lines. Then it switched to the next shot and I pointed it out in that one, and the next three. Then suddenly, David said, "Oooooh, I see. We missed it didn't we?"
On every case, there was a utility pole nearby and each one had a long strip of bright pink plastic tied around the pole to act as a wind indicator. We never noticed because they looked normal in context.
"Holee-fuck!" He mumbled and we sat there speechless briefly watching the images go by, then we shut down the projector and went upstairs and looked at the police department photos of the sites that we had never inspected and saw the same tape at each location. Nobody had noticed. David was impressed, he hugged me and escorted me back to bed but I was too excited to fall asleep, so at 3am we drove to Waffle House on Dyer and ate breakfast. While we were there David called the voice mail of the cop in Vegas and told him about the pink tapes.
Our 4-day weekend was spent mostly at home. We slept late but spent one night in the desert with an ATV and our small tent and an ice chest full of wine and food. We had one of those nice Yeti ice chests that kept ice for nearly a week. David installed a cargo rack on the back of his ATV, which was perfect for strapping the ice chest and camping gear to. With the Yeti on the rack and David driving it didn't leave much room for me, but luckily my twink body was rather thin. The good part was I got to grind my front side against his back side. When we got near other ATVers I had to drop my hands to the frame so we didn't act openly gay in public.
We tent camped near Brice, and ended up attracting other ATV couples but we were the only MxM couple that we saw. It seemed that hetero couples enjoyed riding together on 4-wheel ATVs so they could grind their bodies together, and I'm sure rubbing against the seat turned some girls on. Plus, she could ride with her arms around his muscular upper body. We didn't hear any faint moans that evening from the other tents. Once in a while you saw a couple riding together on an ATV with him in moto pants with no shirt and she's wearing a bikini. Frequently, we saw girls riding on back wearing cutoff jeans and a t-shirt with no bra on and her nipples poking out for everyone to admire.
None of the campsites were close together but all within sight of each other on the soft desert sand. A few strangers walked over to say hi, since our faces were becoming familiar with this group of ATVers, who were mostly from El Paso (east side) and Alamogordo. One thing I should stress here is the Chihuahua Desert is generally not flat; it's lumpy and very green. There are thick desert plants growing on top of every lump, and on average the furthest anyone can see in this desert is perhaps 70 feet, since the weeds growing on top of the lumps blocked your view. The average lump was 3-12 feet high and over 15 feet across. There were places where it wasn't lumpy (WSNM) but most of it was. Around El Paso and Juarez the Chihuahua Desert was very lumpy, but elsewhere it was more flat.
A good place to see a typical section of Chihuahua Desert is on g-maps, along the 375 Loop Bypass north of Montana Avenue on the east side of El Paso. Switch to street view and look at the desert. Those lumps with greenery on top are taller than most people which made it hard to see very far in the desert. Most desert plants were thick with thorns and biting insects.
One of the couples that walked past our tiny campsite in the desert was a younger hetero couple, both of them were really cute and looked younger than us, like early 20s. We briefly chatted about ATVs and the nicer trails around Brice. He looked like his body hadn't changed much since high school. He was thin and slightly muscular. I think the correct term for his body was 'toned.' That guy wore white moto pants with lots of dirt stains but he had no shirt on. His lower belly was hairless and he had a nice perfectly round hole just above his waistband. His nips were nickel size and flat, we could see her breasts were B-cup size with nips that pointed out and up. She had the bottom of her shirt tied up to display her flawless belly button. They held hands the entire time they visited and you could see both of them were horny.
I hoped they had a few hours to spend time humping that night; I'd almost like to watch that show. Both David and I liked watching hetero porn especially for impressive come shots when he pulled out and spurted on her smooth stomach and ample bosoms.
Both of us believed the spurt distance and the volume ejected was an independent measure of the quality of the sex; David usually spunked further than me. He's the cause of the little droplet stains on the wall above our headboard. I jokingly told him if we ever moved and built a house we should tile our bedroom the same as the bathroom because of his spurt radius. Then when we had company over I'd let him explain why our bedroom was tiled, walls and floors. I think his distance record was 7.5 feet back in college. So maybe we should tile the ceiling too.