Apparently, William Miler had a relative at the Screaming Eagle Resort in New Mexico,
one of the top resorts out west where I'd always wanted to vacation, but never found the chance.
New Mexico was nice and far away from New Jersey. Plus, I highly doubted Oleg's criminal
network had an outpost in this resort town. I had been researching this town since mid December,
when William first suggested it. William's cousin's kid moved there two years ago. This was
William's quid pro quo, in that, for his helping me. All he was asking was for me to move to this
resort and check up on his cousin's kid. His cousin died suddenly last year and William felt
terrible about that. But the strange part of it was that the cousin died an illegal alien despite
owning a successful plumbing business for twenty years. William figured that his cousin's kid
also was illegal, though William did know that he was working at the Hilton Garden hotel in the
ski village of Screaming Eagle.
“Don't tell him who you are exactly…actually, don't tell anybody who you are exactly,”
William said to me.
We were standing in his basement, a workman's dream, and I'd never seen toolsets like
those he had. I bet someone could build a small city down there. William's wife, Betsy was out
shopping. William felt most comfortable down there in the basement, and I couldn't say that I
blamed him. He was in the process of building some cabinets for one of his kids. They were
going to have glass frames in the front, so I was guessing they were for the kitchen. William had
one cabinet near completion with cherry finish, and he told me that he had custom ordered the
glass front of the cabinets.
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“That makes sense,” I replied. “The plan is to leave for the resort in a few weeks.”
I decided a few weeks ago to move up the disappearance date for a number of reasons;
first, Peter Hansen had strongly suggested it, and second, because the need to leave my medical
building in the dark was becoming a key part of the plan. I had to keep my departure as close to
5pm as I could. The ideal date was in late December, but there was no way I could arrange this in
that short amount of time. The earliest I could do this was in mid January, during which the sun
sets around 4:55pm and it gets pretty dark by 5:40.
Perhaps the biggest reason for me moving up the date concerned the fictional „other
party' in competition with Oleg. My story about the guy talking with Susan at our house
definitely hit a nerve with Oleg, enough so that he and his thug partner seemed like they were
starting their hunt for this person that night of our holiday party. Also, I didn't think I could keep creating this illusion for three or four months. At some point, they would figure out my game. So
if I waited until mid February or early March, Oleg might have come to his senses by then.
My obsessively compulsive brain was now quite relieved that my last talk with Oleg
happened the way it did – errors and brain farts included. By incorrectly stating that this person
asking questions about the Zyptorin trial talked with Susan and not me, I had made it easier for
me to avoid Oleg's wrath if he determined that there was no other guy. I could simply say that I
didn't talk with him. So I couldn't confirm if he was threatening me or was there for another
reason. Maybe he was a reporter, a stock research analyst or even somebody on my committee.
Granted, this fictional guy didn't leave his name, as most non criminals would, but I thought I
was in as good a spot here as anyone could possibly have expected me to be in at that point.
Still, the thing was, here we were in the first week of January, and this „other guy' hadn't
found me to threaten me yet? This was not realistic, so the next time I met with Oleg, I was going
to have to up the ante and tell Oleg that this other guy put a gun in my back in the parking lot of
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my medical building. And threatened me in the same way Oleg and his thug partner did. They
didn't have access to the garage – they would know that they couldn't have seen this from the
outdoor parking lot. Also, I was going to tell Oleg that I didn't get a good look at him because he
told me to get in my car and face forward.
I had yet to identify Oleg and his partner sitting in the outdoor parking lot though I was
convinced they were watching me throughout the day. I thought I saw them last weekend on
Skyline Drive and considered running up to their car. But I didn't because I didn't want them to
think that I was looking over my shoulder. That might have made them quite suspicious. It was
like I was a Ringling Brothers employee, walking an illusion tightrope.
Still, it would have been nice to know when the Czechs planned on visiting me again.
“I have arranged for the cash transfer like we discussed,” I said.
I was trying to mentally recall the long to do list that William gave me a few weeks ago.
My offshore account in Belize recently posted a $70,000 deposit via wire transfer. These were my
living funds for my time at Screaming Valley. Susan and Tom would be fine. They would have
plenty of cash reserves and Susan was still receiving her severance from Hallmark who
essentially paid Susan to leave after Hunter's Mill was bought out by the greeting card company.
Most importantly, beloved Stanley was a very wealthy who would gladly help his sister out
financially if need be. I hoped the life insurance didn't pay out - that might be the one crime I
ended up committing - but if it did, I would have to deal with that at some point down the road.
William had told me that New Jersey, and most states in the Union, require seven years to
pass before a missing person can be officially declared dead. But given the crime scene that I was
planning, the police might take a much quicker path. Enough time would have to pass to rule out
kidnapping. Though, if no ransom was demanded, it could be declared a murder by the police in
just a few months.
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“Good. Have you looked into Greyhound?” William asked.
“Right…they don't require an ID for tickets bought in cash.”
Once I disappeared, I needed to stop using anything that was traceable. Clearly, Susan
and probably the police would notice a credit card transaction posting after the crime scene time –
that would be totally stupid. A debit card from our bank would also be quickly detected, so,
basically, I couldn't use anything in my wallet.
I thought about leaving my wallet at the crime scene but was leaning against this idea. No
cold, hard reasoning for this leaning – maybe I needed to bring it with me for dire emergencies or
even to give me an emotional salve – but that was okay I guessed. The thing about this whole
plan was that I knew I was going to make mistakes. I just hoped that these mistakes didn't bring
harm to my family.
The greyhound route would require three days of travel in the bus, heading across the
Midwest to Colorado and then down to New Mexico. I needed to pack light and pick things that I
knew Susan wouldn't notice missing - a toiletry bag stuffed with my toothbrush, razor, shaving
cream, deodorant and hairbrush would certainly be detected by my wife. Not that she would be
suspicious if the police believed the crime scene. I had a ratty pair of sneakers that I would wear
on the bus and would probably bring the work shoes that I would be wearing that day in the
office. If I didn't have room for the work shoes, I could've probably just thrown them away
somewhere on route.
I had never met anybody who had ridden Greyhound though it didn't have the greatest
reputation, with online reviews saying to ride up front as close to the driver as possible to ensure safety. But no one online had found trouble on the bus themselves. A fight did break out in the
back of the bus, during the ride of one reviewer. It took the driver several minutes to stop the bus and resolve the problem. The driver wielded a heavy night stick, apparently.
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The reviews did say to expect the bus to be highly crowded at all points during the route,
and I didn't know how I was going to sleep – I had never been able to sleep in a car. Anyway, I
was not expecting to be too functional when I did arrive at the resort, so a lack of sleep over a few days wasn't going to kill me. Screaming Eagle was 100 miles south of Sante Fe, and Greyhound
actually didn't travel to the resort. A Daybreak Transports bus from the Sante Fe stop would carry
me the final leg of my journey.
“So…how do you see this playing out at the end of two years?” William asked.
I had told William that I planned on being at the resort for two years, but there was
nothing magical about this length of time other than needing to make sure the Oleg threat was
gone for good. They could leave town the day they learned of my foul play ridden disappearance
or they could poke around my neighborhood for a while to see if I turned up. I chose the latter as
the most likely, though I had no idea how long this would take for the Czechs to give up. Given
that their crime network had to be much larger than these two thugs, extra caution was necessary.
Hence, the two years.
“I'm not sure Susan will ever speak to me again,” I replied. “Tom will be close to
graduation…”
William held his right index finger up. “So you plan to settle back into your life on
Skyline Drive?”
“That's something I haven't figured out yet.”
And that was the truth. I didn't know if I would ever get our life back. Let's say my
family believed my story – I did have the audio tape for evidence – and they were willing to
reconcile with me, how could I live in this town without looking over my shoulder every second?
While I didn't know where Oleg and his network would move to next, I did know that most
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pharmaceutical companies were based in the New York metro area and also that most drug trials
were coordinated here, so I didn't see Oleg moving to the West Coast. Were his operations based
in New Jersey? The Linders were living in Philadelphia, so maybe Oleg was based there.
Of course, I'd have to start my practice all over again, after years of building it up; all of
my patients over the next two years would have no choice but to find another physician. I
suspected that, at my age, my only option would be to join a larger group of Internal Medicine
docs. Not too difficult if I could get all my colleagues to realize that I was not some freak who
had a mid-life meltdown.
“Yeah, I suppose you can afford to deal with that issue at some point down the road,”
William asserted.
“Well, I don't consider it to be a luxury of mine…it's more like I'm kickin' the can down
the road.”
If I got all worked up over what might happen two years from now, I might never have
gathered the courage to pull off what I had to do in two weeks. I didn't want to tell William that
because his question was a legitimate one and he was only trying to help.
“Do you think you can find physician work down there?” William began sorting his vast
array of drill bits.
I laughed for a second. “No, I'd be crazy to try to re-apply for a New Mexico medical
license under my own name and no place will touch me without a license.”
Dr. Jake Mansen died last month in Albuquerque, New Mexico - he was 42 years old –
having been killed in a car crash, and, for about a day in late December, I planned to use his name
and medical license at the resort. The name would check out at the resort medical facilities – the
Screaming Eagle Resort had two mountain side facilities for ski accidences – where I could work.
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Any standard check with the New Mexico medical board would show me, Dr. Jake Mansen, as a
licensed doctor.
Like I said, that thinking lasted for a day, after which I came to my senses. Even if the
board didn't catch the resurrected license on the first pass, they were bound to catch the deceit
when the license goes up for renewal. I didn't even have Jake Mansen's license number, which
any doctor worth his salt had put to memory or had displayed in his office. So, when the board
learned that neither the medical facility nor I had the license number, the red flags would have
risen mightily. The bottom line was that I didn't plan on having to work. Any half cocked ideas
that could blow up the two year disappearance plan just had to be kicked out of my mind. Plain
and simple.
My current NJ medical license was up for renewal next winter - I'd have to let it expire.
That thought alone almost gave me a heart attack as the NJ medical board could be a real pain in
the ass. I always had renewed my license three months in advance due to horror stories I had
heard about doctors getting suspended or put under review by the medical board for silly mistakes
as renewal failure. Of course, even if I only disappeared for two months, the board would still ask
me some tough questions because they would surely find out about my leaving.
“How do you know if the Czechs aren't watching you during the day at you office?”
William asked. “Have you thought about the possibility of them interrupting your crime scene?
“Yeah…they can't park in the garage, so I'd have to give them a reason to be
suspicious,” I said. “The practice will be locked and dark. You can't see the light of my office
from the window looking in from the lobby.”
The plan was to draw the blinds and use a flashlight – Oleg could be looking through my
office window for all I knew. If I had learned anything from the Czechs, it was to expect the
unexpected. I had no idea how to do that except to try to think like them as best I could.
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“You should put the blood and flesh fragments on the fabric of the chair,” William
asserted. “Like you just got stabbed and, after reaching for the wound, you put that hand on the
chair as you fall to the ground.”
“What, and then leave a small blood trail on the carpet out to the exit?” I asked. I tried to
imagine me being dragged down the hallway. My office was eighteen feet from the staff door. I
walked the length out yesterday.
I planned on disabling the outdoor light above the staff door next weekend during the
day. If I waited until the night of the crime scene, I risked Oleg seeing me and getting suspicious, and I needed to keep the Czechs from waiting for me outside the staff door the night of my
disappearance. If he caught me next weekend, he could see that there was nothing suspicious
going on in the practice – I was simply changing a light bulb.
William sat down on one of his work stools, then crossed his arms. “Let me think…put
the blood on your hand and fingers and grab the doorframe from the inside, about a foot above
the carpet.”
“Like I'm badly wounded and am being dragged out of my office,” I said. “I reach for the
doorframe to stop from being dragged any further.”
I hadn't figured out if I was going to be shot or stabbed or both. I wanted to leave enough
of a mystery for the CSI as to how I was wounded and just how badly, but, obviously, the flesh
part of the plan pointed to a knife attack.
My latest thinking with the flesh sample from my body was to take a small piece from
my upper left thigh, an area that most resembles the stomach area. William had told me to keep
the flesh fragments really small and almost impossible to see with the naked eye. Sounded
simple, yet I was not exactly looking forward to the moment when I cut out a piece, however
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small, out of my upper left thigh. The fine hair on my thighs was similar enough to those on my
stomach. According to William, when a knife penetrates a body and is pulled out flesh fragments
are left on the knife and the wound area. I was planning on two layers of stitching since the
wound would need to be deep enough. Probably two stitches on the outer and deeper layers. I
didn't do a lot of stitching as an Internal Medicine physician; in fact, I removed way more stitches from patients than put in fresh ones.
“Then, also take that bloody hand and wipe it on the carpet leading out to the exit,”
William revealed. “You should also spread some of it on the walkway outdoors.”
There was a little bit of snow on the ground. If it was still there in late January, I could
smear some blood on the snow patch behind the building and away from the main parking area -
like I was dragged toward Wilton Avenue.
“You need to be careful of any security cameras along Wilton,” Williams said.
“Right, I'm thinking the Red Robin might have a couple cameras,” I replied. “There's a
walkway to another office building thirty yards behind our building – I thought I'll head along
that walkway.”
I certainly didn't want to leave any footprints in the snow.
“Well, that other building might have cameras, so I wouldn't plan to get picked up in
their parking lot.”
The inside of my left eye started itching, and I wondered if it was the sawdust down there
in the workshop. My other eye was okay, though, which was strange. The handy, but sometimes
annoying asset of being a physician was the constant awareness of allergy inducing environments.
This drove Susan up the wall at times, so I had learned to keep my findings mostly quiet.
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“It should be hard to identify me because I plan to wear a hoodie sweatshirt underneath
my down jacket,” I state. “The building behind us corners Wilton and Marsh, a much smaller
street with apartments. I can get picked up on Marsh.”
“That sounds good,” William affirmed. He stood up from the stool. “You know, I could
pick you up on Marsh Street.”
We heard some footsteps upstairs. Betsy was home, and she was singing a holiday tune.
I smiled at my retired detective buddy. “That would very helpful. Thank you, William.”
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Monday, January 6th
11:15pm