Red Rock Island (Damian Green Book 1) (24 page)

Natalie and Damian just stared at Angus dismayed at the gang’s logic laid out for them; knowing there was no logic they could counter with. All they could do was to topple the leadership.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“Okay I’m ready to do a release. I’ll need a little time to write the algorithm for all of the guys at Soledad and San Quentin, but the email strike will go out at perhaps one in the morning. That way the guys with the illegal cellphones will have all night to stew if they’re checking their in-box.”

“I can take a list of the names and tell you if you left anyone out or if you included anyone from a rival gang. I’m eighteen months out of date, but I’ll mostly be accurate.”

“Have you thought of inciting the gang?” asked Natalie.

“Isn’t just sending the email prodding the gang into action?” replied Damian.

“You could be more brutal by adding a standard line to all of the email distributed,” she suggested.

“Wow, Natalie. You’re all in to this operation; so much that you want me to stir the pot further,” Damian stated amazed.

“Yeah, well we only have once chance to get this right. So perhaps it’s in our best interests to fan the flames in the direction we want them to go.”

“Not a bad idea, Natalie. I’m trying to think if using the gang’s creed on them will do that,” Angus said rubbing his chin in thought.

After pausing in thought for a while, he decided it wouldn’t work.

“I don’t like the creed for this; instead, how about mentioning family? One of the ideas that the gang preaches is that the Brotherhood is your family now inside of prison. They’ll take care of you inside and outside of prison. I think if there are disrespectful emails circulated, then that takes away the illusion of family.”

“Okay let’s work on that language,” Damian said. “Also, I was just targeting in-prison members, but it sounds like I need to add Brotherhood members on the outside as well.”

Angus and Natalie agreed with that strategy.

“That’s going to require several more hours of computer work to figure out who those people are. We better finish up here so I can get working.”

“You know tomorrow is a national holiday so I’m off work. I don’t know how to hack but I’m pretty quick with data,” Angus said. “Can I help you get it done faster?”

“Ditto for me, Damian; can I help even without the technical skills?”

Damian’s mind moved at lightning speed considering and discarding thoughts. His gut reaction was not to invite Angus to his home. Ever since Ariana washed up on his shore, he’d had an endless round of visitors on his island, so he was inclined to say “no” to both of them. But he was back to Natalie’s comment that they had only one shot to get this right, so if he wanted the attacks on his island to stop, he might need to enlist the help of these unlikely partners.

“Okay. I don’t like strangers on my island. Up to a month ago, Natalie was my only visitor across the years that I lived there; so Angus understand it’s not you personally when I say I don’t want you there. However, I need to get it right and the more eyes the better. I’ll leave right now and the two of you can park your cars at the Richmond marina and I’ll come for you there.”

“I don’t have a car, I walked to the bar, so I’ll have to ride over with Natalie.”

“I thought you two met in the parking lot,” Damian said.

“We did. I walked down the street and through the parking lot to the door.”

“Okay, I’ll see if anyone can give you the boat ride at this time of night, otherwise I’ll move you myself out to the island.”

They broke up their meeting and departed. It was close to ten at night and he knew Mike was normally an ‘early to bed early to rise’ kind of guy. Perhaps the harbormaster knew of someone. Natalie hadn’t seen his dock and for some reason, he wanted to keep a part of his island a secret, even from his closest friend. He would feel better about letting them on his island if they had to come by boat and zip line. A ride was arranged and he relayed the information to Natalie. A short time later he was watching a boat approach in the dark with lights on the bow and stern. The guy said he would return for Natalie and Angus even if it was three in the morning.

The zip line had them on top in short order and they entered Damian’s house. He paused in his kitchen to make them all a cup of tea and they went down to his lab. Several hours later, Damian was ready to hit the send button. He checked in with Natalie and Angus one more time before hitting the send key. With their nods, soon there thousands of emails being sent out to Aryan Brotherhood members both inside and out of Soledad and San Quentin.

“When do you think conversations will start? You said communication was slow, do you think this civil war will begin today or some other day in the future?” Damian asked.

“I would guess tomorrow because guys on the inside will be slow to receive email if they don’t have an illegal phone. They’ll have to pay to use a kiosk. Guys on the outside will know just as soon as they open their email,” Angus replied.

“Let’s hope this works. Meanwhile I’ll arrange transport back to the marina for you guys,” Damian said.

Within half an hour, Damian had his privacy back. He didn’t know how else he would have finished the night’s work without the two of them there, but he hoped that within forty-eight hours he would have his life back. He yawned and headed to his bed to sleep hoping for a vastly different world upon awakening.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Damian and Natalie did an across the telephone high five and he sent Angus a gift certificate that gave him the next year’s tab at Pete’s free, Damian would pick it up. In three days of upheaval for the Aryan Brotherhood, new leadership was elected and the slate was wiped clean for all names on both the kill and harass list according to Angus’ inside contact to the gang.

Natalie came back from Phoenix with a confession in hand from Mr. Watson regarding his ex-wife’s death. She texted Damian before she left Phoenix, with Detective Shimoda and Greg Watson. She followed up with an email later that read,

The blood at the crime scene had been too much for him to ignore and he cracked when he saw the pictures of the master bathroom blood stains; the memories of the murder were too vivid in his head. The couple had been having arguments off and on for a year and she’d been unfaithful to their marriage. He thought to threaten her with a knife during an argument they were having in the kitchen. She said she was in love with the other man, he’d been chopping vegetables for a dinner salad. She walked away from the argument by stating that she was going upstairs to take a shower. Without realizing it, he followed her upstairs with the knife in his hand.

They argued some more upstairs and  he said he waved the knife back and forth as an extension of his hand. He wasn’t threatening her with the knife rather he moved his hands a lot when he talked. While his hands were in motion she charged him with her hands in front as though to shove him backwards out of the bathroom. She tripped on a rug on the floor and fell onto the knife and died instantly. He thought it went straight through her heart. He didn’t know what to do, he just knew if he called the police that they wouldn’t believe him that it was an accident. We likely wouldn’t have believed him. So rather than take his chances with the police, he waited until it was dark and then took her body out to the dump site in a garbage bag. He went back home and cleaned up the mess, then called the police and filed a missing person report. He then backed his car into a post at a high speed crushing the trunk and causing the car to be totaled. He thought there might be blood evidence that leaked out from the bag. He replaced the bathroom floor linoleum with tile that apparently another owner replaced with laminate wood flooring which was what we pulled up to see the stained plywood. So we were lucky. If the tile was still down we wouldn’t have found the stain.

He waited for the discovery of his actions or her body for years and it didn’t come until the utility workers discovered her remains so many years later. He’ll serve some time for this mostly for the cover-up, but I would guess the DA will have a hard time getting twelve jurors to agree on a guilty verdict. The department is very pleased with this first case and they know I have a second one that’s close to being solved. I’d love to share the spotlight with you Damian, are you sure you don’t want to be recognized? I’m sure there’s a way we can cover up your computer hacking.

No, Damian thought, I absolutely don’t want recognition that I had anything to do with these cases. It was bad enough that the Brotherhood had entered his life without also having a police department and the media there too. He replied,

I don’t want recognition and if you let my name slip out, I’ll never lend you a hand again. I’m very sure I don’t want any recognition. Do you need me to stop by your house and dismantle the booby traps? I can send Eddie instructions on how to do that as well?

Natalie indicated that Eddie would make an attempt to dismantle the stuff, which was great in Damian’s mind as the commute to San Jose could be brutal. When he had time, he’d look at commuting in his zippy new two seater boat to the Redwood City Marina. That had to be a faster commute than driving, but for the time being he had no need to journey south.

He now had one cold case solved and the Brotherhood off his island. The second cold case was waiting DNA analysis which Natalie might get the following week. It was time to return to his everyday life and a list of things he’d been ignoring. He made an appointment with his friend to get Hermione certified in scuba diving. He booked a house in Cozumel, located on a beach that they could walk out in their scuba gear to dive. He arranged a charter jet to get them there a week after school ended. Which was two weeks away. They had one more swim meet and then if Hermione did well, she would also go onto the regional swim meet. He sent the details to Ariana and they agreed to tell Hermione of the planned vacation after her swim meet that night.

Finally, he got back to his work on the wave technology. He was stuck on how to store the energy efficiently, safely and cheaply. He was still convinced that the answer would be found in salt or hydrogen; he just hadn’t figured it out yet. After another couple of hours, he wasn’t any closer to an answer. So then he moved on to DNA analysis. It would take two to three years of work to get federal and law enforcement approval for anything he invented in this area. That was a depressing thought, but maybe if he figured out something that worked, it would serve to prioritize certain specimens for the police; move them ahead in the official DNA lab until he got approval and a patent for this invention. He started by using a dry-erase board to describe his needs. It would need to process a wide variety of surfaces from clothing to wood to metal. He continued to detail his needs lost in thought about the perfect analyzer. He was startled by his phone alarm and looked at the time. He was due at Hermione’s swim meet soon. He’d have to leave the island in the next ten minutes to make it to Ariana’s house in time for the two of them to commute together to the meet. He’d skipped lunch, so he grabbed a few snacks on his way out of the house and was soon speeding across the bay.

Ariana waved to him from the house when he arrived. He tied up his boat and walked over to where she was standing.

“I thought for a minute that you were going to be late; let’s go,” and she turned to head toward her garage.

“Can I grab some bottled water before we go? I was lost in an invention most of the day, missed lunch, and ate a few snacks on the way over here, but now I’m parched.”

Ariana grabbed a bottle for each of them as she often found herself thirsty cheering on Hermione.

“So what were you working on?”

“DNA testing.”

“Don’t they have that already?” asked Ariana puzzled.

“They do, but it’s a pretty screwed up system. At a minimum, it takes fifty-six hours to process each piece of trace evidence. It’s why rape kits are backlogged as long as two years in some states, which I find unconscionable.”

“So what’s the bottle neck? What’s your plan to fix it?” she asked while driving.

“From my research, the problem is extracting trace evidence from surfaces; it’s done in a very labor intensive manner. Imagine a shirt comes in with three blood stains. A tech will spend several days extracting the evidence in a sterile environment. If the item is old and covered in dirt, that makes it more difficult. Or if it is wood, it will absorb evidence differently than cotton.”

“Got it,” Ariana said. “So you want to make a device that senses what the surface is and then technically extracts it in a correct manner. Better still if the machine extracting the sample could also run the sample.”

“Maybe you should be an engineer, because that is exactly what I’m pursuing.”

“Do you want some help with it?”

“How so?” asked Damian, now the puzzled one in this conversation.

“You know I do start-up companies - funding, advising, and finding staff to support someone who has a brilliant idea. You’ve been a one man show for a long time but if you had help you might finish this work faster.”

“I’ve an interest in solving engineering issues and I haven’t felt a sense of urgency to be first to market as I always seem to be first. But this latest idea is different. It’s biomedical which is something I haven’t dabbled in before, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to figure it out on my own. I’ve also met some people I’d like to work with - Natalie’s son’s fiancée and Angus Walsh, the ex-Aryan Brotherhood guy. In the case of a DNA test machine, I have an urgency to process test results, it’s not about creating a new invention. Maybe it’s time I built a research and design facility in Richmond or Oakland and hired a small group of people to help me pursue some ideas swirling in my head.”

“I can help if you do decide to go down that path,” Ariana said as she pulled up to the school where Hermione’s swim meet was.

Hermione was swimming in three different races this time. Her last meet qualified her for one of the regional meet races and today she wanted to nail the other two. She wasn’t swimming for a place but to meet a time standard for qualification. Ariana and Damian had the numbers she needed to meet and were anxiously watching the clock with each lap. As she neared the last lap and appeared to be within reach of hitting the time, they stood on their feet cheering her on. In the end she nailed one of the races but not the other. Still as a fourteen year old, with a very disrupted life, they were thrilled that she’d even qualified for two races. The regional meet would occur over the coming weekend, so they discussed how they would get there. It was nearly two hundred miles away so it made sense to get hotel rooms. Depending on how far Hermione advanced in the competition, they could be there all weekend. It would be a nice introduction to spending time with Ariana and Hermione for longer than a few hours at a time.

“I’ll make reservations. Do you want to bring Miguel?” Damian asked.

Ariana looked around the area they were sitting to watch the meet, and decided it wasn’t a great place for dogs. The dog would sit in the bleachers or the hotel room. If she took him to the river for a swim, she had no way to clean him up afterwards.

“No I don’t think that’s a great idea. I’ll get my friend to dog sit him.”

Damian nodded and they checked their watches expecting Hermione to come out of the locker room at any moment. She was nearly the last kid out carrying her gym bag, her short hair nearly dry.

“Did you see my time? I qualified for two events at regionals! My coach had all of us that qualified stay behind to arrange additional training this week. We weren’t supposed to have practice after today.”

“Congrats, Hermione! Damian and I just made reservations for a hotel in Fresno for this weekend so we can cheer you on.”

“This is going to be so cool. My old school didn’t have much in the way of coaching for swimmers and Mr. Bowman really helped me improve my start times and I bet I could shave some more time off of my start with some more practice. So there’s a decent chance I’ll swim even faster this weekend.”

“That’s really cool. Do you need our help? We could time you going off the platform at Ariana’s house,” Damian suggested.

She thought for a moment, then shook her head, “Mr. Bowman has a lot of suggestions to improve my ability so it’s more than just reacting to the starter pistol.”

“Do you want to go out to a restaurant now to celebrate your victory?” Damian asked.

She shook her head no and said, “I have a project due in two days and I had three weeks less than the other students so I’m cramming a lot in this week between my project and now extra swim practice and an away meet on Friday.”

They went back to Ariana’s home and she invited him to stay for dinner. Hermione would be studying upstairs, but the two of them could enjoy a glass of wine.

Damian debated then shook his head and added, “I guess I’m like Hermione in that I was on a tear earlier thinking about my DNA test machine design and I’d like to get back to it. Besides I want to think about your earlier comment about setting up a company to manage my inventions.”

Ariana nodded and they soon parted ways. She returned into the house to get some work done and eventually cook dinner. He was speeding across the bay in his zippy little two seater boat; his mind on adding some more items to his white board on the DNA machine. He was about two hours from sunset on a very windy day, so his boat was being tossed around on the white caps of water.