~ Forks, Washington - August 03, 2004 ~
I pulled up into the Forks Police Station parking lot just after 3:00pm. It was my fourth day helping out at the station. Much to my surprise, the Forks Police Department was quite a busy place. Mostly because of the amount of territory they had to cover. Granted most of the calls were traffic related, but at least once a day something out of the ordinary required their attention.
"Hello, Betty," I greeted the part-time receptionist. Betty was in her sixties. She was sassy and brash, and loved the Chief like a second son. Ever since I started, Betty had been contemplating asking her granddaughter, Angela to stop by when I was around. Apparently we were both the same age and she thought we would make a good couple.
"Oh, hi, Edward," She replied back. "The Chief is out on an accident call on the South 101. He left some files on the desk there for you to look at, sweetie. Hey, do you think you could handle the phones until the service takes over? I would like to stop by the market."
"That shouldn't be a problem. You take off and I'll handle things here."
"Oh, great! Thanks! Hey, you should come by on Sunday for dinner, Edward. My granddaughter, Angela, will be there. I think you two would hit it off." Betty's thoughts drifted to her granddaughter. She was not flashy, but still pretty. Betty was concerned that she was too shy and reserved. Her father was a minister and very conservative. Angela's mother was Betty's daughter. She used to be vivacious and outgoing, but after years of living with her minister husband, she had become boring, at least in Betty's eyes. She loved her granddaughter and wanted her to find her spirit.
I hated this part of moving to a new town with the family. For first few months, or at least until people knew I wasn't interested, I always had to deal with the invitations and propositions.
I put a smile on my face and politely declined. "I can't on Sunday, Betty, but thank you."
"Okay, Edward. But be warned, I don't give up easily." She replied back with a wink before leaving the station.
About two hours after I arrived, Chief Swan returned from his traffic accident call. His thoughts were filled with the mangled motorcycle that hit an oncoming SUV. The Motorcycle driver was rushed to Forks Community Hospital, but he did not expect the man to live. The SUV passengers were largely okay, but they would spend the night at the hospital for observation.
"Hi, Edward," the Chief greeted.
"Good afternoon, Chief Swan."
"Not really." The Chief sighed and shook his head. "I hate motorcycles. You don't have one do you?"
"No, sir." It wasn't a lie. I didn't have one currently, but I have owned several over the past few decades.
"Good. They're nothing but death traps." The Chief shook his head trying to clear the accident from his thoughts. He looked around the small station for Betty.
"She left early to go to run some errands." I replied before catching myself. It wasn't the first time I had responded to the Chief without him talking. He cocked his eyebrow at me as he wondered how I always managed to anticipate what he was thinking.
"Okay." He said slowly. "Any messages?"
"Nothing, Chief. It's been quiet."
The Chief nodded and walked to his desk. He locked his pistol in his desk drawer and sat down with a sigh.
"So how's it going with the files?" He asked. The chief had left me a stack of unsolved cases that had been on the books for the last year. The files were a mix of hit-and-run, shop lifting, vandalism, and in one case, the death of some livestock and horses on a farm outside of town. I had actually run into the property owner at the lumberyard several days back and his thoughts betrayed that he killed the animals so he could make the insurance claim. At that time, I wasn't going to do anything about his mental confession, but now that the Chief had handed me the file, I felt I needed to do something.
"I finished going through all of the files you left." I replied as a grabbed my notes and the files.
"All of them? Wow, I figured that would take you at least several days to get through those." The Chief was more than surprised that I could go through the files that quickly. He wondered if I really read through them, before he glanced at the dozens of pages of notes I had taken. "Damn, the kid works fast!" I internally cringed as he added that to list of oddities he had been collecting on me.
"I did." I simply answered. I pulled out the animal death file and opened it. "I think in the Mitchell file it was a case of poisoning by the owner that killed the animals."
"Really? How did you come across that?" He asked. "We didn't find anything poisonous at the farm?"
The Chief secretly thought it was Robert Mitchell who killed his own animals, but nothing supported his suspicions. Plus, the case was not really his at this point. The Clallam County Sheriff's office had opened the case after Robert Mitchell filed a criminal complaint that someone had poisoned all his livestock and horses. Chief Swan was surprised Mitchell had gone to the county sheriff rather than come to him. Only after the Clallam County Sheriff's office came up empty, was Chief Swan called in to see if he could lend a hand. The Chief had interviewed Mitchell and the parties listed in the file, but he could not find anything. Also, by the time the Chief was called in, the Sheriff's office had cleared the animals to be destroyed, so no further forensics could be done on them. All that the Chief had were the original toxicology reports.
"Well. Mr. Mitchell had several tanks of liquid fertilizer on the property." I pulled out the site inventory sheet and the County Sheriff's photo of the fertilizer tanks. "In his affidavit Mitchell said that these tanks were low urea nitrogen fertilizer he used on his vegetable garden. Which is largely non-toxic. However if you look in the corner of this picture." I handed the chief the picture and he inspected at it. "The hazard label that is visible is what would be on tanks of anhydrous ammonia fertilizer, which can be very toxic."
"Hmm." The Chief said to himself and reached for the file. He pulled out the next sheet, which is what I was going to show him next anyway. He was already heading down the path I was on. "By the time I was called in these tanks were gone. Robert had said at the time that he returned them to the farm supply warehouse to be refilled."
"Exactly!" I answered. "Now I just did some checking before you came." The Chief raised his brow at me again. "I called the farm supply warehouse and Mr. Mitchell never ordered any low urea nitrogen fertilizer, but he did purchase three tanks of anhydrous ammonia fertilizer, along with fifty pounds of a sensory feed additive. This was a month before the animals were reported dead."
"Sensory feed additive?" The Chief asked.
"Yeah. I had to look that up too. It is an additive that makes animal feed more pleasing to their taste and smell." I replied.
The Chief completed the line of thought. "Or to mask the fertilizer from the animals. The toxicology reports list deadly levels of nitrogen in all he animals. Ammonia-based fertilizer would do that, right?"
"Absolutely." I answered. I reached behind me for a paper and handed it to the Chief. "Here is the purchase invoice. I had the farm supply warehouse fax it over."
The Chief looked over the invoice. "I personally called the farm supply myself and requested his invoices, how come this was not included?" He asked more to himself than to me.
"Actually, I asked them that. After some prodding, the clerk let it slip that you got the invoices that were billed to his account through their sales system. This was filled separately, outside of the sales system." The Chief looked at me expectantly. "He paid cash for the items on that invoice. Neither the Sheriff's office or you saw that invoice"
The Chief leaned back and rubbed his mustache and chin. "And because it was paid in cash and a delivery out of inventory, the farm supply was hoping to keep this off the books so they wouldn't have pay tax on the transaction."
I didn't understand the separate filing either, but it now made sense.
"A lot of the merchants around here do that, Edward." The Chief continued. "Cash transactions are often viewed as tax-free money. Sure it's illegal, but most think it's harmless, at least until they get caught. Remember, Capone was convicted on tax evasion, not the murders and racketeering he performed."
I wondered what the Chief would think if I told him Al Capone was born only two years before me.
The Chief placed the receipt in the file folder and closed it up. "This was excellent work, Edward. Really. I know that Mitchell received his insurance check. He hasn't been too quiet around town about it. I need to contact the insurance company and speak to them. I will also need to get an affidavit from the farm supply. Mitchell is also guilty of insurance fraud now too. I will take it from here, Edward." He stood and patted me on the shoulder. "Again…excellent work!"
The Chief was amazed at my deduction and research skills. However it was my gift that gave me the advantage the Chief never had. From Mitchell's own thoughts I knew he was guilty. Plus, I was blessed with a perfect vampire memory. I remembered seeing the hazardous warning label for anhydrous ammonia in a textbook during an agricultural science class. The rest, as they say, was history after I made that connection.
"So what else have you found in those other files, Edward?"