What's Left is Right: Book two of The Detective Bill Ross Crime Series (19 page)

“What a day!” announced Bill as he arrived home and kissed Elaine on the cheek. “I need a wee dram. Can I get you a glass of sherry? I’d like to tell you about my day. We’ve got him, Elaine! We’ve got what we need to put Garrison McMullen away, and there’s more.”

Elaine finished putting the pork chops for their supper in the oven, washed her hands, and joined her husband in the family room and took a sip of sherry.

Bill told her the whole story; it took a while, of course, and storytelling is thirsty work, so the contents of the bottle of Glenmorangie had been significantly reduced by the time they both sat down for supper.

“You’re enjoying your work then, honey?” said Elaine.

“Aye, well, someone has to do it,” said Bill, raising his Edinburgh crystal whisky glass into the air.

“I’m talking about the detective work, not the whisky consumption you old fool!” said Elaine.

“They both go hand in hand, my love, it’s like the ying and the yan.”

“It’s the yin and the yang! I think you’ve had enough for one evening!” said Elaine and grabbed his glass.

~

As Bill was dozing off on the sofa after supper, his cell phone rang.

“Hello?” he said tentatively.

“How goes the fight?” said Joe Nichol.

“Ah, it’s yourself, a little late there for you, is it not, Joe?”

“I’m just getting ready to go out clubbing,” joked Joe. “I’ve been watching developments on the TV, you’ve got your man I see?”

“Ah, long way to go yet, Joe. In our opinion there is no doubt that McMullen ordered the killing and Jimmy Rodriguez and Pepe Vivar carried it out. Shit, I can’t be telling you this,” said Bill, realizing that his Glenmorangie-induced relaxed state had resulted in him telling Joe more than he should.

“Your secret’s safe with me, just you and Tommy do your job and make sure that these assholes get the needle. Just thought I’d call to touch base; keep up the good work, Bill!” and Joe was off to go clubbing.

~

It was the following morning and Garrison McMullen was due to be arraigned by Judge Bonnie Lewis in the main courthouse in downtown Austin. The press and the public were both out in force and the police were doing their best to keep the entrance to the courthouse clear. Tommy, Marie and Bill wanted to be there to see McMullen arraigned and to see if Julien Boudreaux’s no-doubt Oscar performance would have any effect on the outcome. They stood together off to the side of main entrance awaiting the grand arrival.

A Travis County transit van pulled around the corner followed by a Cadillac SUV. They both stopped in front of the courthouse and Julien Boudreaux was first to emerge from the rear of the SUV. He walked across to the transit van to witness firsthand his client emerging from the back cuffed to a Travis County deputy.

Garrison McMullen had dressed for the part. He wore a black Stetson, white cowboy shirt, blue jeans with a snakeskin belt and a huge buckle, and a pair of what looked like $4,000 black full-quill ostrich-leather boots. He obviously wanted everyone watching to know that a powerbroker Texan was in town.

Crack!

A single shot pierced the Stetson, and half the side of Garrison McMullen’s head was vaporized. The deputy was unharmed but it looked like someone had just dumped a gallon of red paint all over him. The Stetson spun in the air and, as if in slow motion, gently settled on the ground. Julien Boudreaux had also been the beneficiary of some of the red paint, and he was trying to wipe it off his face with his white silk handkerchief that was now completely soaked in blood and brain matter.

Complete panic ensued. Law enforcement personnel tried to regroup, organize and get a location of the shooter. Sirens blared. Orders were being yelled.

“What just happened?” said Tommy.

“I guess someone didn’t want to wait for the trial,” said Bill.

“We need to protect Jimmy and Pepe. We need to get them out of the holding cells to a secure location!” yelled Chief Dunwoody. “I’ll make the call! Now, you guys get back to the office; this is a mess, a fucking mess!”

~

Back at the holding cells they had received the orders to get Pepe and Jimmy transferred.

“What’s going on?” yelled Jimmy as two deputies manhandled him out of the cell and down the corridor to the transit van parked at the rear of the building. Pepe, led by two other deputies, was a couple of paces behind. They exited the rear of the building to walk the ten yards to the waiting van.

Crack
! Jimmy Rodriguez’ head disappeared in a cloud of red mist. Pepe Vivar, walking a few steps behind, let out a scream.
Crack
! The scream was instantly silenced as Pepe’s head was also vaporized.

Two shots, red mist, and two bodies with no heads lay on the ground.

At the two locations they found the sniper rifles and took them off to forensics, but they doubted that they would reveal anything. It was a logistical impossibility for one person to have committed both assassinations, so a team had to have been involved. They had operated with precision, predicting that after the killing of Garrison McMullen the police would try to protect Pepe and Jimmy.

~

The mood was somber when they all met in the conference room later that evening.

“What a mess!” said the DA, “Any ideas or opinions on what might have happened here?”

Chief Dunwoody was first to speak. “We did everything by the book, Tom.”

“Well, someone misread the book, Bill.”

“This was a very well-planned and well-coordinated assassination,” said Tommy. “We have to ask ourselves, who would benefit from their deaths? They all had stories to tell, secrets that could damage others, creating a domino effect across many criminal organizations.

“As an example, the other night Enrique Rodriguez flew up to talk to us about secrets that he had and was willing to share about Garrison McMullen. That suggests to me that it wasn’t just his brother’s best interests he had in mind, but his own. McMullen could have traded what he knew about Rodriguez to save his own skin. The people Rodriguez works with are serious players. They would have the capability and resources to pull this off. I think we need to look at Enrique Rodriguez first.” concluded Tommy.

“What are your thoughts. Bill?” asked the DA as he saw Bill leaning back and staring at the ceiling.

“I think Tommy is right—well, almost. The part that doesn’t fit with Tommy’s theory is that Jimmy Rodriguez was killed. Would Enrique take out his own brother? The answer is, maybe. He was a homosexual and it’s well known that Hispanic red-blooded males don’t like faggots. But kill his own brother? Again I say maybe. I think we need to start with Enrique Rodriguez and see where that takes us,” replied Bill.

“I have to leave. I have a meeting with the governor downtown and I’m not looking forward to it,” said the DA. “I expect the governor-elect will also be there. Does he know yet what the DNA tests revealed?”

“No. not yet,” said the chief.

“Well, that’s fucking great!” said the DA as he stormed out of the room.

“Good morning, is Gavin McMullen available? It’s Detective Tommy Ross calling.”

“Good morning, Detective Ross. It’s Valerie Smith here. Gavin is in a meeting right now regarding the terrible events of yesterday. Is it something that I can help you with?”

“No, Valerie, I just wanted to try to get on his schedule. I know he has a lot on his plate right now and his head must be spinning with the death of his father and everything else that’s going on. Can you tell him please that I need an hour of his time? I have some important information that I need to share.”

“I’ll try to catch him between meetings. The earliest I can see an open slot would be six o’clock tonight; would that work, Detective?”

“Yes, that would work, Valerie, just give me a call back if Gavin confirms that it works for him. Many thanks!”

~

When Tommy got off the phone, Marie was standing behind him like a praying mantis.

“Latisha Williams is going berserk. She demands to speak with you to get up to speed on what’s going on,” said Marie.

“Okay, let’s get her on the phone.”

“Latisha Williams!”

“Latisha, I have Tommy on speaker, do you have time to talk?” said Marie.

“Of course I have time to talk, Marie. Tommy, what the fuck is going on over there? Have you any idea who the shooter was? Can I now go with everything I know? You promised me, remember.”

“I remember, Latisha. You have to keep quiet about all the research work that you, Marie and Julian have been doing on Venture Point Holdings. We don’t know yet what the whole picture is there and how Enrique Rodriguez ties into it.

“On the shootings yesterday, you can write away to your heart’s content. It will be announced soon, but we think it was impossible for one shooter to pull it off. We have no leads, so there is nothing to write about that right now. As soon as the smoke clears and I know something, I will let you know. Hang in there with us on this; I think there will be a great story for you to write when we have put all the pieces together.”

“Okay, but no secrets, Tommy, or I’ll nail your balls to the mast!”

~

They finished the call with Latisha as Bill walked into the room.

“I just got this package delivered to me by courier. There is no sender name but the courier said that he picked it up from the front desk at the Hilton downtown earlier this morning,” said Bill, holding a box about the size of a shoebox in his hand.

“Well, let’s open it. You don’t hear anything ticking inside do you?” joked Tommy, but the look on Marie’s face suggested that she didn’t find the joke the least bit funny.

Bill opened the package and inside was a backup hard drive storage device. There was also a single sheet of paper with a typed message and no signature. It read:

You will find the contents of this drive of interest. Now that Garrison McMullen has gone to meet his maker, the FBI and the DEA should be briefed as soon as possible on what is contained here.

There are several video-recording files on this drive. They were recorded by Mike Muguara as part of a surveillance operation that he was running on Garrison McMullen and Enrique Rodriguez. The equipment used for this surveillance was the IP-IRPTZ long-range camera with an integrated synchronized laser illuminator. It has a range of up to 3 miles at night, and in daytime the 1550 mm lens provides an extraordinary view from 5 miles away. The equipment was set up at a camouflaged location and complete with a self-destruct device that would trigger if it were tampered with. It was hooked up to a secure network link with a 10-mile range from the location of the equipment. If someone had detected the signal they would have thought that someone had just pulled off the road to talk on their cell phone. This enabled Mike to sit at a location outside the perimeter of the ranch, operate the surveillance camera and record the results. This meant that Mike could be physically 10 miles away from the target while providing a level of definition that could read a vehicle number plate. The FBI can validate its authenticity.

~

Bill went back to his desk to retrieve his laptop and returned to the room. He connected the backup drive using the USB port, and also connected the laptop to the video equipment in the room to enable everyone to see the contents of the video files up on the big screen.

On each of the five surveillance recordings Mike Muguara went into great detail on the voiceover as the images played on the screen. Two of the recordings provided the most compelling evidence of a complex organization that had taken years to put in place and was now in full operation.

Surveillance video #1 showed the group at a Christmas party, the party that Mike Muguara had mentioned in the video recording that he had left with Bob Corbin.

Mike’s voiceover
- As you can see, Enrique Rodriguez and Garrison McMullen are clearly entertaining a bunch of other high rollers at a Christmas barbecue. There is another group arriving now in a convoy of five vehicles with front and rear security. The muscle is getting out of the front and back cover cars and forming a security perimeter for their bosses to make an entrance to the party. All these cars have Mexican license plates and two are clearly official Mexican police cruisers. Enrique and Garrison are now embracing the VIP who has just arrived. I can’t identify him unless he turns around. Yes, got him, I think that’s Pablo Zambrano, the head of the Zapata drug cartel. The FBI will need to confirm, but I’m sure that’s who it is.

In surveillance video #2, six men are seen loading cattle, people and packages of drugs into a Rodriguez Trucking eighteen-wheeler specially designed to segment the cargo so that in the unlikely event that they were stopped by law enforcement, a cursory inspection would show that the truck was full of cattle.

Mike’s voiceover
- As you can see, they are unloading packages of cocaine and marijuana from pickup trucks with Mexican license plates. You can see the plate numbers clearly now, which should enable them to be traced. That is Enrique Rodriguez standing off to the side of the Rodriguez Trucking eighteen-wheeler and he appears to be upset about something. He has stepped over to where the illegals are being herded into the truck. My God, he just shot two guys in the head! The others are now running into the truck. He’s now shaking hands with the driver of the truck and patting him on the back. The driver has climbed into the cab and the truck is now pulling away.

“I need to go get the sheriff, He needs to see all of this and then make the call to the FBI, and they will bring in the DEA and other agencies as needed. This evidence is dynamite and it perhaps confirms our earlier theory that Enrique ordered the hit on McMullen, Pepe and his brother and had the drug cartel people arrange it. If they had spilled the beans on all of this to save their skin, then it would have been game over for Enrique and his cartel buddies.”

Tommy then left the conference room to go find Chief Dunwoody.

~

“How is the analysis into the financing of Venture Point Holdings progressing, Marie,” asked Bill as they sat together in the conference room after Tommy left.

“Julian Hernandez has been a huge help. We had found that there is both legitimate money and suspicious transactions flowing into the Venture Point Investment fund. An example of legitimate money is the Texas State Retirement Fund, and an example of a suspicious transaction is a one-time contribution of three hundred thousand that hit the fund last week from a bank in Grand Cayman. It was a pass-through transaction, it would appear, from a Chinese bank in Hong Kong. Julian thinks that what is happening is that dirty money from drug sales and illegal alien payments is being shipped out of the U.S. by Deng Shipping Lines into Hong Kong and then the Chinese are converting that at 70 cents on the dollar to clean money that then hits the Grand Cayman and bounces to the investment fund.

“If he’s right then the principle bad players in this are Enrique Rodriguez, Eddie Tang and the now deceased Garrison McMullen. The good players are Finlay Robertson and Charles Haywood. These two probably suspect that something is going on but they’re not active in the money-laundering scheme. Finlay and Charles could probably keep everything going legitimately if Eddie Tang and Enrique Rodriguez were removed from the scene and the money-laundering racket was closed down. At least, this is Julian’s opinion,” concluded Marie.

~

Tommy arrived back later that afternoon and announced that the chief was now up to speed. He had called the Feds and briefed them, and he was booked on a plane to FBI headquarters in Washington DC that night. Tommy then left again for his meeting, now confirmed with Gavin McMullen at his offices on South Congress.

~

“Thanks for agreeing to see me, Gavin. As I said to Valerie earlier today, your head must be spinning with all of this. How are you holding up?” said Tommy.

“I was under no illusions about my father, Tommy. I guess I just pushed it to the back of my mind. He needed to pay for what he did, and over the last twenty-four hours I have reconciled myself to the fact that perhaps it was best that he was killed rather than be put through the trial and go to jail for the rest of his life.

“He was a major figure in the Republican Party, so the party and I have both been damaged by what has happened. I will just have to suck it up and try to explain to the good people of Texas that I am not like my father and see how the chips fall.”

“You may need to sit down, Gavin. I need to tell you something that will come as a shock to you.
Garrison McMullen was not your father.”

“What!” Gavin McMullen stared at Tommy with a look of complete disbelief.

“He believed you were his son. But your biological father was Achak Muguara. who worked on you father’s ranch. We’ve matched your DNA from the samples we took from you to the skeletal remains in the Chevy truck dumped in Lake Travis. Your DNA is a match for both; your mother is Alyana and your father is
Achak Muguara
.

“We have also determined that the man murdered at Whispering Hollow was Mike Muguara, the son of Achak and Alyana -
your brother
!

“The man you thought was your father killed three people: your mother, your father and your brother.

“Achak Muguara is also of first nation lineage. He is a descendant of Chief Muguara of the Penateka tribe, a sub-tribe of the Comanche. He was killed in the Council House fight in San Antonio in 1840.

“Gavin, you are of the Muguara lineage, a Comanche first nation Indian. Muguara means
Spirit Talker,
and your spirit talker line reaches back to the times when the buffalo herds roamed the plains of Comancheria. We also know that your mother, Alyana Parker, was first nation, so that means that you, Gavin, are one hundred percent Native American. You are a Comanche!”

~

Gavin flopped down into a nearby chair.

“I can’t take this all in! Are you sure? There is no doubt about anything you have just told me?” said Gavin, slumped on the chair, head in hands.

“If this is true, my entire life has been a lie. I am not who I thought I was and I’m not the person that the people of Texas voted for when I won election to be the next governor of the state. Where do I go from here?” said Gavin, sounding totally devastated and spent.

“Well, if you want the opinion of one Texas voter who voted for you, you are no different from the man you were, the man who ran for the office and won. I don’t think that suddenly you’re going to change who you are inside or what you stand for. I would say that you need to tell the people of Texas that when you’re ready.

“Only a handful of people know this, Gavin. You can deal with it in your own time and in your own way. I came here today because I believed that you needed to be told as soon as possible.”

“Thank you for doing that, Tommy. I need time to think all of this through,” concluded Gavin.

Tommy left Gavin McMullen to his thoughts and headed back to the Hudson Bend.