Chapter 9
"Mr. Odobescu, this is for you. This is a warrant to search your back yard." Tripp said with his no-nonsense tone of voice as if he were expecting trouble from the man who was as big as he was.
Letitia, still in a robe and nightgown grabbed the paper from her father's hands. As if this was an often repeated game, she also stepped out of his reach and turned to one side as he tried to retrieve the sheaf. "Wait Papa, I'm reading," she said impatiently. Her gaze rode down a page and then a hand quickly flipped it over to the next page and she repeated the action.
Horatio wasn't sure whether to be amused at the idea that a fourteen year old math whiz might be able to understand the legalese of a warrant or at the idea that she could pretend so well.
When she came to the last page, she calmly handed the warrant to her father. "They can pretty much do what they want Papa." Her voice had become small and timid making her sound very young.
Her father's face fell causing his eyes to go wide. His large brown eyes flecked with green took on an anguished look. "Come, I show you. Letitia, you go upstairs and stay."
For once the girl had nothing to say and did as she was told.
Once in the back yard, Horatio looked for a gate and asked permission to open it to allow the ground sensor to be wheeled in.
While watching Ryan push the machine back and forth across the yard, which was about as interesting as watching someone mow a lawn, Tripp murmured, "I thought that anthro-whichever was going to be here."
"I think you mean anthropologist, and she's an archeologist, Frank. We had a slight hitch in the plans. She thinks some of the depressions could be old American Indian burial sites. This could be a graveyard and if so, it can't be physically disturbed without the presence of an official from the Tequesta Indian council. She knows the ins and outs of the contacts so she is tending to that now. She said she would call if she'll be able to come today."
"So, what good is this?" Tripp waved his hand at the operation.
"She said that burials of more than a hundred years ago would be deeper than what we hope to find."
These words had hardly come out of his mouth when Ryan stopped and said with a deadly serious tone, "Uh, H, you'd better come see this."
The image on the screen of the ground penetrating radar machine was quite clear; it was the outline of the top part of a body.
"I thought these weren't supposed to be this close to the house," Tripp said indignantly.
"Mr. Wolfe, how deep down is this body?"
Ryan looked at the readout on the side of the screen. "It's about five feet down. Isn't that too close to the surface to be an Indian burial?"
"More than that, gentlemen, it isn't just bones but a complete body." Horatio's voice fell to an ominous whisper.
"Do we dig it up?" Tripp's jaw couldn't have jutted any further forward without being dislocated.
Horatio felt more than heard his phone ringing from his jacket pocket. "One moment, I might have an answer for you shortly.
"Yes, Dr. Sonnier." He had decided it best to keep their personal relationship different from their professional. "What do you have to tell me?" He paused. "I'm glad to hear it because we have a situation here that you might be able to help us with."
He thoughtfully folded his phone and signaled two officers to stand by Mr. Odobescu. The pale face in the upstairs window disappeared. A moment later, clothed in her usual ankle length skirt and blouse with a sweater against the morning chill, Letitia appeared to stand by her father.
He also signaled another officer who was holding small flags on wire sticks to come forward. Once they had the outline of the figure clear, the officer marked out the area where the body was. He put one flag at each corner and then one in between each of those marking an oblong box that was plain to see.
Once done he told Ryan to continue the sweep so no time would be wasted while they waited for the doctor to arrive.
# # #
"Dr. Hawk's Claw has a degree in archaeology and another in osteology. He is one of the tribe's historians." Manon said as introduction to Horatio.
The man's salt and pepper hair showed a modern haircut under a straw hat that was curled up on either side. His sun wrinkled features creased in a smile as he proffered his hand. "How can I be of help today?"
In spite of the friendly words Horatio heard 'I'll stop you cold in your tracks if you disturb anything to do with an archeological site.' He offered his hand in return though he didn't smile. "Glad you could get here so quickly. We're not quite sure what we're looking at here."
After Ryan had repositioned the GPR between the flags, Dr. Hawk's Claw, walking as if he were about to assess a kitten in a well, went to the machine's screen and stared at it. He ran his fingers down the display. "This is a recent burial." He held up a finger. "This is not to say that it isn't a member of the Tequesta tribe or some other Native American. All we can do is exhume the body and see."
Frustrated with having had to wait for the doctor's arrival, Tripp growled, "And what happens if you find out this is an In…a Native American."
"Not to worry Detective. Native American or not, this person shouldn't be interred here with his ancestors if there are any. We have laws. Anyway, we haven't even determined that yet."
"Is there any particular procedure you would like us to use?" Horatio asked respectfully.
"I imagine your department has plenty of experience at pulling suspiciously dead bodies out of the ground without harming the evidence so just do what you do. I'll hang around in case the machine detects something as interesting or more."
After a quick call to Alexx to make arrangements for the disinterment, he nodded to Ryan to continue the search for the gun. Ten minutes later, about twenty feet from the body, Ryan again signaled Horatio. He, Manon, and Dr. Hawks' Claw went to look at the outline of another body. Horatio glanced significantly over his shoulder to Tripp who returned a disgusted look.
The officer with the flags outlined the buried figure, and the group huddled together while Ryan doggedly walked after the machine.
"We're looking for a gun and finding bodies. When can you ever find what you want?" Tripp growled.
Manon looked in askance at the tall man as if not quite sure if he was joking.
Ryan stopped, raised a hand, only this time with a grin on his face. "I think we have it Horatio."
This time Horatio and Tripp alone walked to look at the screen. On it a square object that measured about a foot wide and long was showing.
To be sure, Horatio summoned the scientists to take a look.
"If that's metal, we didn't use it in the days we now consider to be antiquity. We used leather or straw for containers."
"From the look of the density, I'm guessing that's metal."
"So, we're free to dig it up?"
"Dr. Hawk's Claw grinned. "I'll help."
Horatio politely refused. "If this turns out to be evidence we have particular procedures we have to follow."
Two officers who had been standing by with shovels set to work.
Horatio gave a cold look to Letitia's father noticing that she was holding tightly to his hand. The big man was staring blankly at the activity as if he had gone blind.
The box was pulled out of a three foot hole. Once the dirt had been scraped off, Tripp opened it and found a nine millimeter glock 17, an older model, wrapped in plastic. This time, everyone looked at the father who stared as blankly as before.
What, wondered Horatio, was this gun doing in the back yard? It was obviously different from the gun used to shoot Deeshawn, yet it was hidden as if it had been used in a crime. Did the two bodies have anything to do with the gun?
Giving the two officers standing by Mr. Odobescu a glance, the two stiffened, wary of any move that would signal that the man might break and run.
Horatio approached as casually as he could under the circumstances noticing that Letitia took a guarded step in front of her father. "Letitia, I'm afraid we're going to have to take your father in for questioning."
"What about my daughter? We alone, she have no one!" Mr. Odobescu blurted.
Letitia stood straight. "I can take care of myself Papa."
"You won't have to Letitia." Horatio said gently. He bent his head to one side. "I know you have heard of DCFS." He was referring to the Florida Department of Child and Family Services.
"Yeah," she said in a guarded voice dressed with in fear.
A feminine voice from behind made Horatio turn around. "They are not as bad as you may have heard ma chere. My family was not very responsible and my brothers and I spent many times with different families in Louisiana. We were happy with each new set of parents. Oh, la, and the different foods we had, so good!"
"But I can take care of myself," Letitia reiterated forcefully.
"Let's see how it goes. For now, you can ride with your father to where I work."
"You sound like the doctor who said the shot wouldn't hurt." For once she almost smiled.
While the two waited in a patrol car, Ryan continued to work the grid. After half an hour, Dr. Hawk's Claw asked if he could work beyond the broken brick wall to see if it was an ancient graveyard site. The machine found traces of five deeply buried skeletons each with what Dr. Hawk's Claw said appeared to be pottery.
Meanwhile, Alexx arrived with her morgue van. Looking at the yard, her first comment was, "This looks like two bodies, Horatio."
"I'm sorry Alexx, things have gotten a bit hectic here. I hope you have a second bag."
Alexx shook her head and waved her hand with a wrinkled brow. "Now you know I've been at this too long not to be prepared for surprises. I'm just thinking of the time it's going to take to get these people out of the ground."
Noticing that Dr. Hawk's Claw was now by his side, Horatio added. "I have another surprise as well. There is a possibility that these people are Native Americans. If so the Tequesta council will have to be notified so they can determine which tribe will be involved."
Alexx reached out an elegant hand to greet the doctor. "I'll run a DNA test as soon as I get to the lab. That and the bone structure should tell us soon enough about the ancestry."
"I have a feeling they didn't just drop dead of their own. I'm sure that even if they are of tribal descent their relatives will expect to wait while the crime is solved." He turned to Horatio. "Do you think the home owner here had anything to do with it?"
"That is what we hope to determine by the evidence. What will you do about the rest of the graves?"
"Find the village, explore, find as many of the graves as possible, mark them out and go from there. It's been two hundred years or more so we might just exhume what we find and send them to the Tequesta museum to be set up both for reverence and for education. We'll just have to see."
# # #
"Mr. Hubbell? My name is Detective Eric Delko. You remember Detective Duquesne?"
"Calleigh, please." She flashed the Beeks' warehouse manager a smile.
"Of course, Calleigh, how could I forget? And Detective Delko. Now what can I do for Miami's finest?"
Though the surprise was evident on Hubbell's face, he didn't register any alarm at the request for the shipping import manifests for the last six months. More, instead of asking the secretary, Molly, to do the copying, he did it himself.
Calleigh stood by as if fascinated by the copying process, keeping an eye out to see that no pages were skipped. At the same time she made small talk about how and when the business was established.
At the same time, Eric did the same with Molly only asking her what it had been like working in the days of Beeks Senior.
He noticed the faraway look the middle aged woman's eyes got as she remembered the days back then. "He was such a kind and good man. I was with him when he first bought this place. We started out working in this corner but with nothing to separate us from the noise of the fork lifts, the carts that brought the goods from the ship and the trucks coming and going from the bays out there. I don't know how I stood it. Yet, once a month Mr. Beeks (I never called him Michael though he asked me constantly), he brought fresh flowers for my desk. Once a week, on Saturdays, he brought two boxes of doughnuts for the work crew."
"When did the business become Beeks and Son?"
"A month after Mikey was born. As soon as he knew his boy was healthy, he had the sign made and had the lawyer draw up papers. Oh, he was so proud."
"Did your responsibilities increase over time?"
"Oh, yes, of course. I started out as just the bookkeeper/receptionist to private secretary. He would take me on his business trips. I would take notes about agreements and then type up the contracts to be signed. He took me into all kinds of warehouses to inspect goods so I would know what I was writing about. Sometimes we didn't get to dinner until nine at night."
Erik let the pause afterwards grow.
"Oh, it was all above board and all, you know. We had separate rooms!" she exclaimed.
He let that one go. "When did Mikey start having a legal say in the business?"
The mist dissipated. "He'd go overseas during summer vacation after his sophomore year in college. He even learned to speak a bit of Chinese and Korean. He said he wasn't very good but he sure impressed me. I have to confess I missed traveling but I knew it wouldn't go on forever."
"And when did Mikey have any legal part in the business?"
"When he graduated," Molly said candidly. "Mr. Beeks had insisted he take all kinds of business courses so he would understand contracts and all. I guess what we did back in the day was just simpler."
Erik wasn't sure what the look on her face meant this time so he asked, "What is your company title now?"
"Executive Secretary. I still do what I've always done in the office. Now that Mikey is dead, I think I'm going to retire when everything is straightened out. That way, the family can start fresh." She took a tissue from a box on the corner of her desk and dabbed her eyes.
"Who kept track of shipments?"
Molly's eyes widened in surprise. "What do you mean?"
"Who kept track of the where out of country the shipment went once they reached the US?"
"Well, it was more like keeping track of who paid for what they got. Receivers paid when they got their goods. We're a small operation by many standards so it's easy to see when our books are running short."
"What if someone says they didn't get what you sent?"
"We have a tracking system. It's like most shipping companies nowadays where there is an electronic device that reads a bar code. This thing transmits the process to our computers and sends emails to the place that ordered it. We would know if something was lost."
Eric gave her his lop sided smile. "So lost isn't really lost?"
Molly actually gave his question some thought. "I guess the only way something would be lost is if it never got into the system in the first place." She paused, her eyes slowly tracing a line from one side to the other. "You know, there is a gap from the ships that come into port either here or the larger Miami port, you know those big shipping containers. Trucks bring those to us. Anyway, they use bills of lading and we have to inventory each crate. Then we put bar codes on them. If something was going to go missing, the time between inventory and barcoding would be it, I guess. Why do you ask?"
"Just curiosity I guess. It's part of my job, you know."
"It must really be fascinating." Her hand rose gently where her fingers formed a place for her chin to rest as if she were posing for a portrait.
The handsome CSI looked nervously at Calleigh to see how far the printing had gone. Just at that moment she turned.
"Ready to go, Eric?"
"You'll have to excuse me Ms…"
"Call me Molly, everyone does."
"It's been a pleasure Molly."
They shook hands while her cheeks colored ever so slightly.
The ninety percent humidity and eighty-five degree temperature was a shock after the dry, cool temperature of air conditioning.
Swallowing a few times to get his equilibrium back, Eric wondered out loud if Molly had ever been married. "For sure she had a big crush on Beeks Senior. They traveled together all over the States as well as to foreign places. The way she put it, I'm guessing there was some hanky-panky."
"I'd guess nothing ever came of it though. I looked her up before we came here. She's never been married and if she ever had a child there's no trace now."
"Do you know about Senior's wife?"
"Died of stomach cancer when the junior was about ten."
"So, I guess Mikey grew up with his father alone to show him the way. It will be interesting to meet Junior the second."
"I can hardly wait to take a look at those shipping lists. Molly said the only time something would get lost was between being unloaded from a ship and being barcoded for destination."
After a moment's pause, Calleigh said, "I wonder how we would know."
# # #
"Horatio, I think I have the red flag; several in fact." Calleigh waved the sheaf of papers she had brought from the warehouse.
Horatio turned a gentle smile onto his favorite blond. "And they are?"
"Step into my layout room, said the spider." She waved her arm to the room with the table that had lighting underneath.
Horatio watched the pages being laid out and noticed several red lines. "The red flags?"
"Well, aren't you just the observant one? I was afraid I hadn't been obvious enough." She looked coyly up through her hair.
"Okay, now, you'll notice that the shipments I noted are all dishware and all headed for the Jacksonville Naval Air Station."
Horatio waited knowing the obvious conclusion of dishes for the mess halls on base would be wrong.
"Now, see this column? It specifies the carrier for each shipment. What struck me is that no other carrier has these initials. I called the warehouse and talked with Molly, the secretary. She said that meant that this shipment was taken by Mikey in his plane. He never had much cargo so he apparently he could take these shipments."
"Even if it was every week, that would still be a very small shipment for a base with a compliment of over a thousand at any one time." The nearly six foot red head raised his chin as he perused the blocks of lights in the ceiling. "You know what Calleigh, call the base and see what you can find out. You might just have to take a road trip with Eric."
# # #
Answering his phone, Alexx's purr warmed Horatio's ear. "Horatio, the victims from the back yard were men and they were not killed at the same time. I'm also guessing from first glance that they were not Native Americans but I won't know for sure until I run tests. It's just that one has dark red hair and I never heard of any tribe with that color hair."
"You're right, I don't think there were ever any Native Americans with that color."
"More, the two men were shot and buried several months apart though I am guessing they were killed with the same type of weapon. One was a through and through but I found one bullet. It's up in Calleigh's lab now."