Bobby's Interview

"Hello Mr. Johnson." A grey-haired man shook Bobby's hand.

"Hello, Sir." Bobby answered. His manners were at their finest today.

"Call me Chuck."

"Bobby."

"So you're looking to be our general contractor. What makes you think you can make the cut?"

"I have been working on construction since I was 18. I worked for my uncle during the summers and I went to school to study business at UGA. After I graduated, I came home to Atlanta and worked my way up"

"You didn't go into finance?"

"The stock market was junk, and my uncle was hiring, so I got to work building low-income housing, never looked back."

"How long have you been a general contractor?"

"Since 2002."

"What projects have you done?"

"A preschool, lots of houses, restaurants, office buildings, a bridge."

"You've done a lot of stuff." Chuck was impressed, well if he was honest about this all.

"Yeah. Atlanta's business was booming before 2008. People were throwing up projects left and right."

"You've been in the market a long time, looking to retire soon?" Chuck didn't want a guy trying to drain a pension as soon as he got there.

"I'll work until I'm dead, or until they send me home, whatever happens first." Bobby meant that. He was no homebody.

"How long have you been in LA?"

"5 days."

"How do you like it?"

"I like it. The nights are dry and cool, unlike sticky Atlanta."

"Do you think you'll get homesick and go back?" Chuck didn't want to hire Bobby just to lose him.

"There's nothing for me there anymore. My dad left. My sister moved here and brothers scattered. My daughter went on to college. Nothing to be homesick about."

"Do you have any references?" Chuck wanted to verify this stuff. Bobby sounded to good to be true.

Bobby fished out a business card and handed it to Chuck. "Jeff is the president of the company where I worked. He can tell you all about me."

"A pleasure Bobby." They shook hands again, and Bobby was out the door. Hopefully, this would pan out.

Prosecutor's Office

Brenda stared at the board in the team room. Nothing added up. Jackie came in with the information from the auction. "The necklace was sold to a Mr. Schmidt."

"The necklace came up in a police report," Gabriel announced.

"It was stolen?" Brenda hoped this would resolve the matter.

"Oh no. It was destroyed in an fire. The insurance company paid out a $100k claim on a warehouse fire, where a bunch of Mr. Schmidt's valuables were lost, including this necklace."

"That is a very good reason to hide the necklace."

"Can you get the insurance agent to handled the case here?"

"He's on his way?" Gabriel knew where the Chief was going.

"Great."

"Where was this warehouse?"

"It was here, Chief." Gabriel put a pin on the map, where the warehouse was located. It was only two blocks away from where the homeless man had been run over, and it was a block away from where he and his friends had spent their time on the street.

It all makes sense now. Brenda thought to herself. "Mr. Schmidt probably overinsured the items in his warehouse, and set it on fire to collect the money. He discarded the goods and kept the cash. . Our victim gets a hold of the necklace somehow and hides it. Maybe, he saw Mr. Schmidt set the fire. Later, Mr. Schmidt sees the man with it, and tries to get it back. He chases him into the street. He gets hit by the car, and Schmidt takes off the other way."

"How did the victim get the jewelry?" This sounded convoluted to Jackie.

"Maybe, he just threw it in the trash. He figured it would go to the dump and no one would ever see it again, and our victim might have been checking trash cans and dumpsters for food or goods. He might have even seen the fire. followed Mr. Schmidt to the dumpster, and retrieved the necklace after he left."

"How do we prove any of this?" This sounded like a mess to Jackie.

"We find his friends. If our victim found a necklace like this, he must have told someone." Brenda and Gabriel went to the block where the homeless people hang out. Brenda came equipped with a bottle of bourbon. At first, no one said anything to her, but when she showed her bottle, she got a lot of cooperation.

A man tried to grab it from her.

"Not so fast. If you answer my questions, it's all yours." The man nodded.

"Did you know this man?" Brenda showed him a picture of their victim.

"Diver Sam. He was always the first one to dive, head first, into a dumpster, a can, anything looking for something that would be useful."

"Did you ever see him with this?" Brenda showed a picture of the necklace.

"He didn't want me to talk about it. He said it was a secret."

"If you help me, I can find the man who hurt Sam." Brenda gave him her doe eyes.

"He said a man just threw it in the trash."

"Did he say where he got it?" The man took Brenda and Gabriel to a dumpster down the street from the burnt out warehouse.

"Did he find anything else?"

The man brought them back to the camp where there were rings and broaches. She nodded at Gabriel who took pictures of them all on his phone. He texted the photos to the insurance agent.

Now how do I get them to give up their loot. Brenda thought to herself. She could just have Gabriel seize it, but homeless people are not always mentally there. They likely wouldn't understand. She handed the man the bottle of bourbon.

"Thank you very much! Gabriel with me."

"You're not going to take …."

"With me Please." They walked around the block. "If the insurance company can recover the jewelry which they already paid for, they would likely offer these people a reward. If we seize it now, they would likely get nada."

They returned to the office, where an angry insurance adjuster was awaiting them. Henry Dean was not thrilled that he had been had again. He thought the policy was large given what went missing, but he had no proof that the buyer hadn't been scammed when he bought the jewelry in the first place. Maybe he thought it was really valuable.

"Mr. Dean, thank you for coming in. Do you recognize this?" Brenda held up the necklace.

"Well, I'll be damned. I heard it was destroyed in a fire."

"Well a homeless man had it when he got chased into a street and then hit by a car."

"That's too bad. I take it you care more about the chaser than insurance fraud."

"That's right. Although, I did find some more jewelry."

"I got the texts. Would we be able to get that back?"

"I'm sure the finders would gladly trade it for a small reward. I hear you have a 5% finders fee for those who uncover insurance fraud"

"We do," he sighed. He was hoping she didn't know about that.

"Great. We can bring you down for a trade."

"We will need proof of intentional fraud first. Mr. Schmidt could claim he thought the jewelry was destroyed and that someone must have robbed the warehouse and set the fire to cover up the robbery."

"Leave that to me." Brenda had Jackie call in Mr. Schmidt and ask him to come in for a chat.

Major Crimes

Sharon Raydor's house.

Sharon looked in the mirror and sighed. She looked as she did every day, combed hair, Armani pants suit, make up and heels, but today, it didn't feel good enough. She sighed and grabbed her bag. "Rusty, school!" she yelled as she got her keys out.

Rusty came running out. His hair was a mess and he shirt wasn't tucked in.

"Go comb your hair." Sharon admonished.

"It's the new look."

"Not in this house."

Rusty sighed and went into the bathroom. He came back with combed hair and a tucked in shirt.

"Much better."

They left. Sharon dropped off Rusty at school. As soon as she was out of sight, Rusty pulled out his shirt and messed up his hair.

Sharon drove into work. She couldn't shake the feeling that something in her life was missing. She didn't know what it was. It irked her.

She got to work. Right before she walked in the door, Flynn was telling a raunchy joke, Provenza was making even worse hand jesters, Sanchez snickered in the corner and Tao was actually trying to work. Sykes just rolled her eyes. As soon as the door opened, everyone jumped into proper place, appearing to work. Sharon knew them too well and knew she interrupted something.

"Tell me you have learned something new since yesterday."

"I spoke to the lawyer who represented her as a juvenile. He retired and moved to Spain. He said we could get her files from his current partner since she's dead."

"Get on that Tao."

"Flynn, Provenza learn anything knew at the country club."

"We learned she preyed on old men with money. She would find a man, get him to buy her jewelry and then bounce after a few months."

"Any jealous men?" Maybe a lead, Sharon thought.

"It appears that they all saw her as the common gold-digging ho. Everyone paid to play and no one seemed to complain. I guess you get what you pay for." Flynn had a fun at the country club. It's not his scene but these guys did not have a car in the world. Lots of money, drink some scotch, play some golf, fuck bitches. They weren't actually doing anything to hurt anyone, unlike many of the rich fucks he has to deal with.

Captain Raydor was not amused.

"We're running background checks on all of her known suitors anyway and looking into where they were during May 18-21st of last year." Provenza piped in.

"Craig Jr. has been staying at a hotel with his father. We have a uniform to make sure he doesn't skip town." Sanchez added.

"Prescott pawned jewelry all the time. She would drive around to different shops trying to get the best deal when she was out of cash. She pawned ruby earrings about two months before she died for 5k. We think she used that money to pay for her civil attorney for her hearing.

"Have we heard from him?"

"He's under investigation for defrauding the court, so he won't talk. Allegedly, he has been hiring doctors to declare offenders cured when they haven't treated them at all and sends fraudulent documents to the court to try and get people off the registry."

"Has this worked?"

"No. He's just scamming sex offenders as well as the court."

"Awesome." Provenza had no problem with sex offenders losing their money.

"Was he under investigation before the Prescott case?"

"No. Actually, but after the new charges came out, he got a death threat, made out of cut out newspaper letters."

It read YOU TRIED TO RELEASE A SICKO INTO THE PUBLIC. YOU WILL PAY WITH YOUR OWN BLOOD.

"I assume there was no return address."

"No, but it was sent from Seattle, Washington."

"Bring Craig Jr. in here to answer more questions." Sharon wanted to figure out what was with this guy.

FBI office

"Agent Howard" his boss began. "We want you to take a look at this case. There has been a problem with counterfeit jewelry being sold as real in the area." He handed Fritz a box of jewelry, all fake..

"Are people getting it from pawn shops?" Fritz never got jewelry there. You never know these days.

"Sometimes, but now they're appearing in stores. People buy real jewelry and return a fake with the receipt. See what you can figure out."

Fritz got a stack of receipts. His first plan of attack was contact the jewelry stores and see from where they originally got their jewelry. It's possible that the switches were happening at the source of distribution.

After a couple of hours, he found that some of the stores claimed to have contracts with the original jeweler when they did not, so they might have been selling fakes all along. Fritz requested a list of authorized retailers in the area from each affected manufacturer. He then sent all of the jewelry to appraisers to see what all was fake. The whole piece could be fake. Real jewels could have been switched out for fake ones.

Fritz took a lunch break. He actually just ate lunch this time.

Prosecutor's office.

Brenda sat right across from Mr. Schmidt. "Thank you for coming."

"Sure, although I don't know why I am here, and why was I mirandized."

"Oh we do that every time someone comes in here. You know rules are always changing in the courts. I was hoping that you might have seen an accident that occurred last week." Brenda put on her sweetest smile.

"An accident?"

"Yes, we're interviewing all of the property owners nearby, and you have that warehouse."

"Oh, we just had a fire. I haven't been around since it happened."

"A fire, that's too bad. I hope nothing too valuable was lost."

"Nah! Just some jewelry, but that's what insurance is for."

Dean scowled as he watched the interrogation from upstairs.

"When was the last time you were at the warehouse before the fire?"

"Just that afternoon, and everything was fine."

"Nothing was missing?"

"No."

"So about this accident. A man was hit by a car that fled the scene."

"That's too bad."

"You haven't heard anything about that, have you."

"Not at all."

"Well have you seen the victim before." Brenda showed him a picture.

"No, I haven't." Brenda could smell a lie, and he got a little nervous.

"It is an odd case. We can't figure out why he might have been in the street."

"Maybe he tripped and fell." Mr. Schmidt was hoping they just wanted the driver.

"Maybe."

"We actually think someone might have pushed him. Have you ever seen this man before?" Brenda showed him a picture of the man from earlier

"I actually have. He lurks in the alley sometimes. I'm always worried he's going to steal my stuff."

"We think they might have gotten a hold of some jewelry "

"How would they get jewelry?"

"Now that's the million dollar question or well the 100k question." Brenda was closing in.

"What?"

"Isn't that what your policy was worth, 100k?"

"So what?"

"Isn't this your necklace."

"It looks like mine, but mine was destroyed in a fire."

"Really, like all this other jewelry." Brenda showed him all of the pictures.

"That must have all been stolen."

"Then why was it in the trash."

"Uh!"

"And why was there no sign of forced entry?"

"Uh!"

"And why did you get insurance that was worth twice as much as the policy."

"Uh!"

"This doesn't look good for you. The DA will look at this and think you set the fire, cashed in on the policy and when the homeless man found the jewels, you pushed him in front of the car."

"I didn't push him."

"Insurance fraud is bad. Murder is much worse. If you pushed him in front of the car because he saw you set that fire, then that's felony murder. That's a death sentence."

"No one saw me set the fire."

"So you planned on defrauding the insurance company."

He didn't answer.

"Insurance fraud isn't nearly as serious as murder. If you admit to throwing the jewelry in the trash, where the homeless men must have found it, then we can charge our suspect with murder. The DA will consider your cooperation." Brenda was careful not to offer a specific deal of any kind.

"I threw out the jewels, but I didn't kill no one."

"Did you know that the jewels didn't get tossed out with the trash?"

"No I thought they were long gone."

Brenda dropped her phone. When she went to pick it up, she saw his sneakers were still muddy.

"Take off your shoes."

"Excuse me."

"Take them off."

"No."

"I will have them removed. You are in a prison. As far as I know, you have a shiv in your shoe."

"He took off his shoes and Brenda bagged them."

"What will that prove."

"When I compare the mud on your shoes to the mud on the ground where our victim was killed, it will put you on the scene of the crime that night. You pushed him in front of that car."

"No one pushed him. I chased him and ran out into the street like a fool. There was no murder."

"Maybe your right."

"Gabriel, arrest him for insurance fraud, arson and manslaughter."