Secrets by Ian DeShils
Chapter 1
"No way!" Winchaslaw repeated, shaking his head violently.
I'm nothing if not persistent and maybe a little dense as well. I just didn't realize that Winchaslaw was on the verge blowing.. His face was growing red, yet I plowed on:
"OK, forget the week. Two days, that's all I'm asking. If I can't sort it out by then . . ."
"GOD DAMN IT, I said NO!"
Winchaslaw's outburst, brought the office to a halt as all eyes turned our way,
"You've got everything right in front of you! Now just get at it."
Beet red, Winchaslaw stalked past a sea of upturned faces and slammed his office door so hard I thought the glass would shatter. Dave and a few others gave me thumbs up. Yeah, like I ntended to piss off the boss! That wasn't the case, not this time, anyway. Still, I guess it was worth it just to get rid of him for awhile. What a turkey! Always counting pennies at the wrong end. Here he is yelling for results and at the same time stonewalling travel funds. The way he carried on, you'd think air fare to Florida would drive Western Insurance directly into bankruptcy!
Winchaslaw's garlic laden breath has warmed the back of my neck for last two days. He's driving me nuts. Mostly I wanted the trip just to get away from him for awhile. It's impossible to follow up on a single thought with that man perched on my desk like a hungry buzzard.
In an attempt to relax I stood and took a few deep breaths of refreshingly Winchaslaw-free air and then found myself opening another roll of Tums. God, I'm living on the things, the man is giving me an ulcer! I still can't figure out why he's running this department, he's a bean counter, for god's sake, not an investigator. Since Joe retired, Western has gone to hell. All this cost cutting bullshit! I wonder if that actually came down from the head office or if Winchaslaw is just trying to make himself look good. Either way, it's no way to run an insurance investigation, especially this one.
I began leafing through the pile on my desk hoping something would grab my attention. It did, the phone rang. It was my wife, the one person who never calls the office unless disaster has struck at home. I braced myself,
"Sam, now don't be mad. It wasn't my fault."
"What wasn't your fault" I asked, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"The accident! The policeman wants the insurance certificate. Do you know where it is?"
"It's supposed to be in the car, damn it. Above the visor, under that little flap. Didn't you look?"
"Oh, Wait a minute. I'll check . . . " The phone went dead.
Several minutes passed. I fussed and fumed while visualizing the worst possible scenarios, then finally she picked up again.
"It's all fixed. You've got nothing to worry about." Cindy said.
"What do you mean I have nothing to worry about? What happened?"
"Sam," She replied being very reasonable and patient, "The certificate was right where you said, so the man told me that all you have to do is show it to the judge and they'll tear up your ticket."
"Whoa there, My ticket?" I asked incredulously.
"Well, it is your car. You took the van this morning, remember?"
"How could I forget, you were supposed to take the Camaro in for an oil change."
"I did, and then stopped at the store. Anyway," she continued, "I had just pulled into Ralph's parking lot when this kid rammed me. He got a ticket for speeding and you got one because I couldn't find that darn insurance certificate, but don't worry, the policeman said the car is OK. It's only a bumper and a fender"
"And five hundred for the deductible! Jesus, Cindy, this is the third time at Ralph's. You know kids use that lot as a race track, can't you find someplace else to shop?"
"Why are you being so mean about it? It wasn't my fault." Cindy answered, a little catch in her voice.
Instantly I knew if I didn't change my tune, tears would be spilling on the other end of the line. Sometimes I think Cindy works that a bit, she knows I can't stand to see her cry.
"I'm not being mean, Honey, I just wish you'd steer clear of that place. You could get hurt."
If there is one thing I've learned in eleven years of marriage, it's when to pull in my horns. Spouting simple logic at a time like this is not only useless, it's self defeating and there's no better indication of that than a few days of cold meals and utter silence.
I finally convinced Cindy to go down to traffic court and straighten it out - thank God. Winchaslaw would probably have a heart attack if I asked to leave right now and I surely don't need any extra aggravation from that man.
Cindy had no more than hung up, when the mail cart came around bearing a fat envelope from Pete. I was expecting the letter and thought for sure it contained further details on our upcoming fishing trip. No such luck. Instead of maps, I found Pete was just adding more demands on my time. Pete and I have been best friends since grade school, I think the world of him, but Damn it, his timing sucks. The one thing I don't need right now is another problem. I am at present, ass deep in alligators and unfortunately not all of them are in Florida.
The fire at Biotek has me stymied, oh, there's no doubt about the arson aspect, the place was torched. Who ever did it used a napalm type substance containing phosphorous. The fire was specifically designed to be unquenchable and it was, but who was the culprit? The owner, Dr. Andrew Dickerson, claims it was Animal Rights activists and I must admit everything so far points in their direction.
Biotek had been receiving anonymous threats for months, obviously from rights fanatics, and on the day before the fire, ARA's were demonstrating outside the facility. The film clips show a couple of dozen of men and women carrying signs and shouting slogans in an attempt to make the most of their few minutes of free TV air time. Pretty innocuous stuff really, except for the fact that on the morning after the fire, that same bunch showed up again to celebrate. They were ordered to leave, but refused, and that promptly got their butts hauled off to jail. The talking heads are convinced, they've already indicted the activists, but I'm not so sure. There is also the little matter of 800 fried alligators and a sixty million dollar insurance policy. It's been my experience that a large insurance policy is one hell of an incentive for a fire. On the other hand there is so far no way of tying Dickerson to the deed. He was out of state, in New York attending a five day conference on bioengineering along with several of his closest associates. I'm swamped under a ton of Auditor's reports that doesn't prove a damn thing one way or another - and I'm getting nowhere.
I went through the stacks again looking for something to hang an idea on. The first pile was all background stuff on Biotek and Dickerson, all of which I knew by heart. Dickerson is considered a genius, one of those rare people who are experts in several fields. He started Biotek with borrowed money secured by his patents on gene altered vegetable crops, but Biotek itself was built for research in animal genetics, another of Dickerson's interests. Biotek did show early results, filing five new patents in only three years, when ethics questions popped up that aroused the wrath of animal rights activists. After that, it was law suit after lawsuit and Biotek was never profitable again. Dickerson is now at retirement age and deeply in debt. I can't help but think that fire solved too many of the doctor's financial problems.
The odd thing about Dickerson is that as brilliant as he is, he would take on challenges that made no sense to anyone, like the thing he was working on before the fire. For some incomprehensible reason, Dickerson hoped to bring back 'gator farming to the US. by designing a new sterile type of cloned beast that would sidestep the current ban completely. I have no idea what alligator hides are worth, probably quite a bit, still it seemed a rather dumb move financially. Cloning is a tad more expensive than hatching eggs, and fighting Government regulations even more so, but evidently Dickerson made a breakthrough. At least in the first part. At the time of the fire there were more than 800 test critters ranging from embryos to fourteen foot monsters populating some three acres of tightly closed, temperature controlled lab facility. Of course all were barbecue now, gone with the fire that wiped out 99 percent of Biotek, yet it was precisely the loss of those valuable test animals that first made me rule out Animal Rights activists. Unlike other radical factions in this country, ARA's seldom go about eliminating the same thing they're trying to save. Still, the alligators might have been an oversight. The existence of the clones was not common knowledge, the place was huge, the night dark and other lab animals did get away.
I sat mulling it over when Winchaslaw, heading out for a meeting stopped by once more. His hair was freshly combed and his face wasn't nearly as red.
"Well?" He asked.
"Well what? Am I supposed to be psychic? Damn it, I need . ."
"Forget it, Libowitz. You're not getting a free vacation to Florida, and that's final. Just buckle down and get busy. You know the drill!"
I sure did and the thought of spending weeks poring over secondhand fire reports, auditor's statements, and the like, made me sick. I like do my own ash sifting. I work best on intuition and at this moment my intuition screamed Dickerson. Now, all I had to do was prove it . . . >From three thousand miles away.
With Winchaslaw out for awhile, I picked up Pete's envelope again. He had sent a sketchy police report, a 3.5 floppy disk, and his best regards. Truthfully, it does sound more appetizing than fried alligators, but I can't be distracted right now. He'll have to wait. I decided to skim through it again and knock off a quick reply before Winchaslaw got back . . .
Excerpts from preliminary police report dated 3/13/94
At approx. 1:23 AM, the station received a call concerning a
pickup truck parked along northbound interstate 5 with an open
driver's door impinging into the slow lane. Officer David
Krouse was dispatched to investigate.
The vehicle, a white 1994 Dodge Ram pickup, lacking both
plates and registration, was found approximately a mile south
of the SW Bronta Road overpass near Lake Oswego. The truck
when found was in perfect running order with fuel in the tank
and the keys in the ignition. Both doors were open, the
driver's door intruding slightly into the traffic lane.
A search of the immediate area revealed the truck had
made a sudden stop on the shoulder, then backed up, leaving
skid marks in both directions. There were also tire tracks of
another vehicle in the vicinity as well as signs of several
motorcycles, but no evidence of an accident. Nothing was found
in the truck to indicate ownership or original dealer.
The truck was dusted for prints, impounded, and inquiries
made to Chrysler corporation concerning the manufacturers
Vehicle identification Number. This vehicle is almost new with
less than eighteen hundred miles on the odometer.
The VIN report is pending, Chrysler has yet to reply.
May 19th, 1994 Mr. Samuel Libowitz Insurance Fraud Division Western Insurance Underwriters. Prudential Life Building, Los Angeles, CA. 92413
Dear Sam
I know how much you like riddles, so here's a dandy for you. We ran the VIN on the abandoned truck and guess what? Neither Chrysler nor anyone else had one scrap of information on it. Let me amend that slightly. The vin is authentic, yet there is no record of the truck in Chrysler's inventory or on their shipping lists. It was either wiped from the records or never shipped in the first place, there's not even a cross reference on dealer destination. A complete blank. We've checked as far east as Michigan and so far not even a stolen vehicle report matches.
It sure stirred up a hornet's nest at Chrysler. They tell me that all hell cut loose and the company is now up to its corporate nuts in auditors searching for other instances like this one. Well, I guess inventory control is their problem. Mine is trying to figure out what happened two months ago when this mystery truck turned up in my bailiwick. I keep thinking that if a motorcycle gang was bent on robbery they would have taken the vehicle, or at least left bodies to contend with.
At this point, the only thing we have to go on is a computer diskette found in the truck. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but the diskette came to light only a few days ago. It was jammed down in the mechanism between the back rest and the seat and my men missed it completely during two previous searches. The disk contains text files, a sort of manuscript, and while it's probably mostly fiction, we know that GSI and some of the people mentioned are real enough. Since you're down there in shaky town where most of the described action takes place, I thought you might make some inquiries for me. The thing is, Sam, I can't locate anyone named on the disk. They all seem to be out of town right now. In the mean time, I've alerted your local authorities to the possible disappearance of Ted Gibson and Jake Sanders, the two most prominent personages mentioned.
Your mission, old buddy, if you choose to accept it, is to find me just one live body named herein and give me a call. I'll take it from there. Enclosed is a copy of the disk. The last entry carries a computer date stamp of March 7th, five days before the truck was found, but date stamping can be wrong. My own system, for instance, loses a day a month as regular as clockwork. (That's a pun, Son.) Be advised: Don't leave it in your computer for the kids to read. It's definitely not family fare and I would appreciate it if you kept the contents entirely to yourself.
Tell Cindy and the boys I said hello and please be careful with your inquiries. Remember, you're Sam Libowitz, not Sam Spade. I don't think what I'm asking is dangerous, nothing in the manuscript would seem to indicate that, but you have to admit the thing with the pickup passes the border of strange.
See you in July, old buddy, and don't forget to call.
Your pal, Two Gun Pete, (The only elected official from the class of '79)
May 23rd 1994 Sheriff Peter Evert Clackamas Co. Sheriff's Dept. Oregon City, OR. 97820
Dear Pete
I want to thank you from the very bottom of my heart. Here I have but six weeks to get the shit cleared off my desk so we can go fishing, and you hand me another conundrum. Well, it's going to have to wait. You know damn well when I get involved with something I can't put it down, so I'm not going to look at that disk until I've finished with the mess I'm in now.
In your letter you mentioned GSI as well as Gibson and Sanders. You know, old buddy, there's a GSI office right there in Portland and they can likely give you as much information on those two characters as I can.
If you'll recall, it was only a few months back when Gibson and Sanders made the world news by selling GSI. I remember them being portrayed as a pair of greedy bastards who grabbed the money and ran without making any provisions for their top executives, some of whom claimed to have helped start the company.
The one thing I can tell you without even checking is that those two guys cleaned up big time and in the process made some enemies. If you feel someone did a number on them, then you had best look to the people they screwed over when they sold the company.
Damn it, Pete, you've already got me thinking about it and I haven't even looked at that frigging disk yet.
I'll write again after I've had a chance to read it, and yes, Pete, if I find even a marginally live human being who knows anything whatsoever, I will definitely call.
Your put upon friend, Sam
(One '79'r who was never elected to anything, and damn glad of it.)
After firing off my letter I tried to forget Pete's problem, but the thing about the abandoned pickup kept nagging me. Why did that seem familiar? I finally took another look at the Hendry County, Florida Sheriff's reports for the week of the fire and there it was! A patrol car notation buried in with all the rest.
The day before the fire a mini van was spotted parked on the shoulder of a country road some six miles from the lab. The deputy made a note of the license plate and three days later in another report that number came up again. That van was still in the same spot! I Faxed the sheriff my request and learned that the vehicle belonged to one Elmer Crankshaw of Miami. The sheriff had already received one other inquiry about the man from a local boat livery. It seems Crankshaw had rented a boat for a fishing trip back in the bayous, and had never returned it.
Sometimes my intuition kicks in even when there is very little to go on, and in this instance the facts were skimpy. An abandoned van, a missing fisherman and a case of arson. It might all be unrelated, but what if . . . What if . . . A shiver ran down my spine. What if somewhere in that smoldering lab complex was something even less appealing than the remains of alligators? Biotek had been highly automated with no one needed on the premises at night except a couple of gate guards to walk the rounds. According to their records not a soul had entered that night, so the search after the fire was not for victims, but for causes. I immediately put in a request for a closer inspection of the site, which didn't make the sheriff very happy. Bulldozers were just starting to clean up the stinking mess.
Bingo! Under some huge cooked alligators they were about to cover, they found a body,(at least parts of one). The rest, they found inside the alligators. Murder or a mishap? Probably the latter since there was no evidence to the contrary. It was assumed that Crankshaw had fallen from an overhead walkway, but that fatal drop made it very easy to tie the corpus to the delicti. He was our arsonist all right. Near his body they found several neat little timers not available at your local hardware store. Still the question remained: Who was behind him?
We did the obvious background on Crankshaw and found he had a police record that included arrests for burglary and theft as well as for poaching protected species, sea turtles in particular. That last just about eliminated any ARA group unless they'd gone one step beyond fanaticism and commissioned a hit. Bank records came next. His checking account was overdrawn by a few dollars, but that was only part of the story. On a hunch I checked other banks near Crankshaw's home and discovered he also had a safety deposit box. Inside they found several more bank books, each in a different name and those accounts supplied all the proof we needed.
I could hardly believe the deviousness of the scheme. With the perfect scapegoats at hand, all Dickerson had to do was point a finger and wait for a check. It was not only slick, it was a hundred percent tax deductible for Dickerson, or it least it would have been had Crankshaw not taken that fatal dive.
A week before the fire, Dickerson made a down payment for the construction of two waste disposal ponds mandated by the EPA. It was such a mundane deal it would have sailed right past the auditors, except for the fact that this particular check was made out to Charles Shaw & Company, which turned out to be one of the alias's used by the unfortunate and clumsy, dearly departed.
Western denied the claim and it took just a little more than two weeks to button it all up.
When the dust settled, Winchaslaw stopped by to hand me a bit of his back handed praise. I think he was still smarting from the fact that it was he who authorized the clean up at Biotek that almost cost the company sixty million dollars.
"Mighty lucky guess, Libowitz, but just remember one thing, it won't always be that simple."
Lucky? Simple? What a jerk! I've decided that he has to be the dimwitted brother-in-law of some VIP at Western. There can be no other excuse for him running this department. He saw the same reports I did and missed the van completely. In fact, I might have nailed it sooner if he hadn't been bugging me every fifteen minutes for a progress report. At least now, he'll stay in his office for awhile, although what it is he does in still there remains the biggest mystery of all.
With the surface of my desk a little closer to daylight, I again took time to read the morning paper. I hadn't missed much. The President was still up to his neck in Whitewater, the East Coast Mafia war was still in progress, and Russia was still selling weapons to anyone with money. It was the same old stuff, so I decided now was as good a time as any to look at Pete's disk. I probably shouldn't, there's still plenty of work waiting, but I think I owe Pete this one. After all, it was his letter that got me off dead center on the one case that might have tied me up all summer.
Pete never mentioned which word processor made the files so I first had to figure that out. Then I discovered that the writer used different fonts and styles throughout, probably as a way of keeping track of things, since the files themselves appear to be a confused mass of notes, observations and incidents all slung together. Sorting this out is going to be a bitch and it looks like I'll will have to use the date stamps as reference. I scanned a few paragraphs trying to figure out where to start and found that Pete was certainly right about one thing. The 'manuscript' (if that's what it is), is definitely not fit reading material for a pair of ten year old boys.
There are a ton of files on the disk so I had best get at it. Like all of Pete's little problems, this one will probably take longer than I care to think about. . .
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