CHAPTER-06.
“Where the hell have you been all day?” Detective Eric Samuels shouted into his end of the phone.
I am glad I was across town or I would have probably heard him without the phone. He had apparently called a couple of times during the day while I was getting my beauty sleep. He told me I was in a good deal of danger and requested that I get down to his office immediately.
Soon I found myself once again in the cramped little office occupied by Detective Eric Samuels of the Dallas PD sipping really bad coffee. I had met him back in January and he had become a good friend since, but sometimes it seemed like I spent half my time on his turf.
He started our meeting by shoving a printed list in front of me. I found my name fifth from the bottom. It was a printout from the address book the police had taken off of Lola Martin’s computer. My name being on the list had been the reason Samuels had called me into the case to begin with. The four names following my name had been the main thing that had cleared me from suspicion in her death.
“Read the last name on the list” he said to me.
“Shawana Blake” I said.
“Shawana Blake of Plano Texas” he read from his own notes. “Found dead in her house at 10:30 this morning when the mailman happened to see a large smear of blood on one of her windows. Cause of death; Satan’s Path.”
He looked at me silently for a few seconds.
“Read the second to last name” he said.
“BJ O’Riley” I whispered.
“Brenda Jane O’Riley of Dallas” Samuels read. “A neighbor who visits often for coffee and chit-chat found her door open this morning around eleven. Brenda Jane was found dead. Cause of death; Satan’s Path. Also found dead was her husband one James O’Riley. Cause of death; a single gun shot to the head.”
He continued with “Found in the mud in front of the O’Riley house was a single tire track. The lab boys have not finished with it but it looked a lot like the track we got from your driveway, Xara.” He stopped his dissertation at this point to take out a large envelope for me. In it was a black and white photo of the tire track recovered at the O’Riley house. It had been quite muddy in their driveway and it was a good clean impression. In addition to the printed photo there was a computer disk. Samuels told me it contained several shots of the tire impression as well as a couple of shots of the tire track they had pulled from my own driveway. Samuels told me I could keep the photos so that I could look at them on my own computer if I wished.
“Read the third to last name” he said to me.
“I would rather not” I said.
“Edward Ferrel, also of Dallas, and his domestic partner paid for airline tickets to Orlando, Florida more than a month ago. The flight took off around seven this morning. Ed and his boyfriend were on the plane and they are safe but scared at Disney World right now.”
He continued on without asking me to read the fourth to last name. “Robin Cord, and her husband and two children of Addison, Texas are in police protective custody. Read the fifth to last name.”
“Xara Smith” I said.
I had left Jill alone at my house so I dialed her cell number. Thankfully she was safe and alone when she answered. Keeping my voice as calm as I could I instructed her to lock all the doors and not open them until I personally arrived. I also told her to take out my Colt, and make sure it was locked and loaded. Being in the business we are in Jill quietly and confidently assured me she would be safe until I arrived.
In caravan we arrived at my house/office and collected Jill without incident. I was in the lead driving my Taurus with Detective Samuels and two uniforms riding in his car behind me. Following them was an SUV holding two lab techs and a ton of equipment. Last in our parade was an empty van driven by another tech that would be used to haul my desk back to police storage. We drove the three blocks from my home to the storage rental place.
It was 4:30 Tuesday afternoon so the place was still open but it was virtually deserted. We parked in front of door # 1708 which is the space Jill and I had rented less than a week ago. It took me only a matter of seconds to open the lock but it was nearly half an hour before I was permitted to touch the desk. The techs all crowded into the small storage locker and there simply was no room in there for Samuels, Jill, or myself.
First came the photography. The flash of light sparked time after time. Following that was the dusting powder and tape lifting finger prints by the dozens. Rather than allowing we three into the cramped space the techs simply lifted the desk and brought it out to the spacious driveway where they set it down near our caravan of vehicles.
They started pulling out each drawer and looking through the many little nooks and crannies. The process took quite a while because as each drawer was removed they would dust the entire drawer for prints as well as the cavity in the desk that the vacated drawer left. They thought they were finished and had not yet found a thing. I asked Samuels if I could try and he allowed me access to the desk so much like the one my grandfather had owned so many years ago.
It probably would have been easier had there been a chair, because the secrete compartments were designed to be accessed as you were sitting at the desk, but by kneeling on one knee in front of the desk I was able to get in the right position. I reached forward and placed my hand on the shelf that, at least for my Grand Father, would hold a small lamp. I felt along the bottom of the shelf until I found the small rigged surface. I slid that small rigged surface slightly to the left. Magically a tiny side panel from the next shelf to the left opened up like a door. I reached in and found nothing in the tiny space but an old fountain pen. It had been a nice top-of-the-line state-of-the-art pen when it had snuck into the space half a century ago, but its value had diminished over time. Now, I suppose it would be hard to find a bottle of ink to dip it in.
I continued my search. The desk was about twenty-four inches deep but the drawers were only a foot deep leaving a full foot of space behind each drawer. Along the edge of the desk surface there was a nicely carved row of tiny wooden flowers. The desk was built back when people expected carpenters to be craftsmen. I reached to the front left corner of the desk surface and then counted back to the fourth flower on the side. I depressed this flower and the entire left side panel popped open. It exposed the workings of the two side drawers and it also exposed the space behind them. The techs carefully photographed and removed five quart-sized clear plastic bags filled with a white powder from the space.
The right side panel also produced five powder-filled baggies. The techs carefully placed the goodies in evidence bags and went to work trying to gather finger prints from the desk cavities I had exposed. I mentioned to Samuels that the desk likely had more secret compartments but that I did not know how to open them. Each and every member of our search team took a turn trying to guess the location of some other hidden vault. None found any surprises.
I had briefly owned a time machine that allowed for some wonderful memories of my childhood. Technically I still owned the desk but it was now being loaded into a police vehicle and it would be taken to a police lab where it would be carefully disassembled one sliver at a time. Eric Samuels would in fact hand me a voucher for one-hundred and fifty dollars to cover what I had paid for the ugly old desk, but I surely would never see it again.
Jill and I rode in my car but we caravanned back to the Dallas Police Department sub-station where Samuels had his office. We were there only a little while. Samuels knew me, but technically I was just as much a suspect as anyone else in the matter. I mean, should they arrest someone and then should the case go to trial, the defense attorney would surely question the fact that the desk was in my possession for four days and hidden in a storage locker that entire time. Additionally I had known just how to open the hidden storage sections of the desk. Surely I could have placed the drugs there myself sometime after I had purchased the desk. So they took fresh finger prints of both Jill and I even though we were both on file at the local PD already from our past involvement with other cases. They also separated Jill and I and told us to each write out a detailed list of everything we had done since the purchase of the desk. I am pretty sure our stories would match.