IMBERADO
Chapter One
Julie Dinsmore had been anxiously waiting for any calls on the department’s radios after the first call had come in about a shot heard coming from Congressman James Whiteside’s residence near Oatlands. She hadn’t voted for him because she was a Democrat, one of the minority in District 10, but she thought he had always done a pretty good job, for a Republican. She was five foot two with red hair and green eyes, her fiancé called her his “Fire Pixie”. Julie was waiting for anything Sheriff Dexter or one of the deputies might need, but she was surprised that the crackle of the Sheriff’s voice on the radio startled her.
“Julie, this Sheriff Dexter, do you know what Levi Mueller’s twenty is? Over.”
“Yes Sheriff, Levi is sitting out on route nine between the seven and Hillsboro. Tonight, there was horse racing over in Charlestown. Want me to get him for you? Over.”
“Yeah, Julie do that and tell him to get hold of me asap on tact two. Over.”
“Roger, will do Sheriff, right now. Over and out.”
She jumped right into switching over the channel and relaying the Sheriff’s message to Sgt. Levi Meuller. Levi was a deputy Sargent of the department and had been there for 16 years, the Sheriff had been his Captain before he was elected Sheriff.
“What’s the emergency, Julie? Over”
“You haven’t heard Levi, but a shot was reported heard coming from Congressman Whiteside’s house about an hour ago. The Sheriff is there now and he just radioed for me to radio you. Be sure to call him right now on tact two. Over”
“Roger, over and out.” And with that her radio was silent. So she switched back to the main frequency and started waiting again.
Levi switched to tact two immediately and press the handset key. “Sheriff Dexter, this is Levi Meuller. Over.”
“Levi, how fast can you get to Travis Cody’s house? Over.”
“Code three, I can be there is fifteen to twenty minutes. Over.”
“Do it and the tell him I’m asking him to get here with you the same way, with you or following you code three. He is not being arrested, I just need him to be here before I let the Coroner or investigators loose in the house. I know he was friends with the congressman, I want him to walk the scene with me first. Over.”
“On my way Sheriff. Be there ASAP. Over and out.” Levi turned on his lights and siren and took off in the direction he knew well as fast as he could down these curvy mountain roads. Once he turned off the nine it would be all gravel roads to Travis Cody’s place. Levi knew the way well since he and Travis were friends. They target practiced on Travis’s acreage in the northeast corner of Loudoun County, in places it bordered the Shenandoah River and across that was West Virginia.
Travis Cody heard the siren before he saw any police lights, hearing a siren here was unusual enough, since he lived so far off the nine. But when he saw the pulsating blue and red police lights starting to glow through his living room windows he was even more alert, his driveway gate was five hundred feet long from his house, downhill through heavy tree growth and behind a solar powered locked gate that only a couple of people other than him knew the code to on the post panel adjacent to the gate. The only Sheriif’s Deputy to know it was Levi and if he had his siren and lights on this meant trouble for sure.
Travis was standing outside his front door on the porch when Levi spewed gravel all over the drive as he braked hard to stop near the front porch and swung his door open hard to jump out.
“What in hell are you doing Bull Mooseing your way up here like that, code three?”
”Sorry Travis, but the Sheriff called me and said to come get you and go with me to Jim Whiteside’s house ASAP. He said to ask you to come, he needs your help there since you and the congressmen were friends. That’s about all I know except that Julie told me a shot had been heard coming from the house and called it in.”
“Why the hell would Dexter want me? He doesn’t even like me.”
“It’s PI’s he doesn’t like not just you and he said he wants you to walk the scene with him before he lets the coroner and crime scene yoyo’s in there. He thinks you know the house because the two of you were friends, I guess.”
“That probably means Jim is dead. So do I ride with you or can I follow you in the Rover?”
“You can follow me if you want.”
“Okay let me get my keys and lock up here.”
Travis was back out and in his Range Rover in a couple of minutes with the engine started. He fell in right behind Levi’s patrol car with the lights and siren blaring through the usual calm of the mountains. He pressed his code into the clicker for the gate so they didn’t have to slow down too much before the gate swung open. It would close behind them in 5 minutes.
The drive from Travis’s property to Oatlands took over thirty minutes even with the lights and siren, the nine was a curvy two lane road. So speed was an issue until they hit the seven and then once they turned onto the fifteen it was back to two lanes again. The only saving grace was there were no signal lights after the one in and one near Hillsboro. As the two cars pulled into the wide paved driveway of Congressman James Whiteside it was clear most of Loudoun County’s Sheriff’s deputies on night patrol, the Coroner’s meat wagon and the Sheriff’s Department crime scene van were all there and waiting. Sheriff William Dexter leaned forward from his cruiser and stood in front of where they parked.
William Dexter was an imposing figure to most people, all six foot, two hundred and thirty pounds of him with his close cropped salt and pepper hair in his crisp sheriff’s uniform and hat. There wasn’t an ounce of anything other than hard muscle under that uniform and it showed.
“First off, I want to thank you for coming so quickly, Cody, especially at this time of night.”
“Not a problem, Sheriff Dexter, considering. I was a little surprised when Levi, uh, Sargent Mueller, told me you were requesting me to help.” Travis Cody was one of the people Dexter didn’t dwarf by comparision. He was a good two inches taller, maybe 10 pounds lighter, maybe. He was also twenty years the Sheriff’s junior, but his close cropped brown hair showed both men had spent some time in the military once. For Dexter it was the Army and Korea, Travis was also ex-Army, but a Ranger in ‘Nam.
“Yeah, here’s the thing, I guess you have guessed that the Congressman is dead in there. One gunshot from a pistol to his head with the pistol laying on the floor next to him. Looks like a suicide, but you were a friend of his and you know procedure better than most civilians, since you used to be a police officer in Dallas several years back. I hoped you would walk the scene with me before it gets disturbed and give me any insight you might have that we could all miss, since you know this house and him better than any of us. It’s no secret that I have no use for P.I.’S, but I have never heard of you mucking up an investigation like most of them, or stepping over the line in what you do for people who hire you.”
“I can do that, no problem. But I think you should have Levi here accompany us, he has been here a few times too, not as often as me probably, but the more eyes the better I would think.”
“Sure, I didn’t know Sargent Mueller knew the Congressman.”
“We all target practiced together Sheriff, I wouldn’t say either of us ran in his social circles.”
“Okay, are you two ready then. Let’s get this started.” With that said Dexter turned and walked toward the open front door. The deputy stationed there moved aside as the three men approached him, giving them easy access to walk inside.
Just as all three men were inside the front door, Travis Cody came to a dead stop. His eyes were trained on Congressman James Whiteside’s body, sprawled out on the parquet floor on his back, blood pooled widely around the back of his head. Gratefully the large hole in his skull from the exit wound was turned to the floor on the other side than the side visible. A thirty-eight special just inches from the splayed fingers of his right hand.
Instinctively he turned his eyes to survey the room first to the left and then to the right, perusing the room he knew all too well. His immediate thought being, that there was not one thing missing or even out of place. Every picture, every nick-knack, even the chairs and sofa were totally undisturbed. Except for Jim’s corpse it looked like no one had even been in this room and that sent alarm bells going off silently in his head, but just as loud as rockets and mortars had in Nam.
Cody took a cautious step forward and then with the Sheriff and Levi following, he moved on catlike feet into every room, hall and closet in the house. Once they were all back in the living room, he turned to face the Sheriff.
“And?” William Dexter asked with a bit of strained expectation in his voice.
“Somebody has done their work here real well, Sheriff.”
“What do you mean, Cody?”
“I mean, this is the perfect picture of a suicide, too perfect. But whoever they are didn’t know James Whiteside near well enough.”
“How so? I took every step you did and I saw not one thing that would give me the slightest hint that this was anything other than a suicide. Are you sure, you’re not letting your feelings for the Congressman cloud what you saw.”
“Yes I am. Can I show you something Sheriff, something you all would have missed? No offense meant, but you would not have known where to look, not even Levi.”
“Okay what is it you think is that pertinent?”
“Just follow me.” Travis walked around the body of his friend and to the far outside wall where book cases lined both sides of the fireplace. And placed the palms of his hands on the line of books on the middle shelf, pushing against them. As he did that a four foot section of wall and bookcase moved back into the wall.
“What the hell?” he heard Levi say from behind him.
The section of wall moved four feet back until there was a slight click. Then Travis turned around, looked at the two astonished men and repeated himself. “Follow me, be careful there a landing and then stairs going down to your right.”
Travis turned to his right after stepping into the cavity, flipped a switch on his right and walked down the stairway with Levi and Sheriff Dexter following behind. At the bottom of the stairs was another landing with a door to the right, he opened the door and stepped in and turned on another light switch that now bathed the hidden room in bright light, leaving the door open for the other two men.
The room was large, but not as large as the living room on the first floor. It had stark concrete walls on all four sides and drywall covering the upper floor beams for a ceiling. A large gun cabinet was against the opposite wall with a work table to its left and a refrigerator with a small table to its right, on which was a small microwave and coffee pot. There was a television on top of a chest close to the door they had just came in and a couch with a coffee table on the wall between the other two. The last wall was lined with book cases full of ledgers, books and file folders. On top of the bookcase and on the chest on each side of the television were family photos.
“What in blue blazes is this Cody?”
“Well, Sheriff, some would call this a panic room. Jim called it his sanctuary from the world above.”
“I didn’t know this was here.” Levi said incredulously.
“No one did Levi, no one except Jim’s daughter and me. It takes up less than half of the basement that the house had when it was built. And the stairway only takes up a difference in the three feet from the original design, there’s another cavity, the same size, on the other side of the fireplace that is used as a duct for the HVAC, electric and water service into the room, there’s a shower and commode over there behind the book shelves, their plumbed in with the washer and dryer on the other side of the wall separating this part of the basement with the rest of it that you get to by the stairs next to the kitchen.”
“For a panic room this is phenomenal, you could hide here for a long time and no one would find you.”
“That was the original idea Sheriff, Jim had this done for his daughter at first. After she was back from being kidnapped, that is, so she had a place to feel safe in. Then after she died he turned it into his sanctuary.”
“I remember all that, all too well. He hired you to find her and you did, you brought her back and then reported where you found her to both my office and the Maryland State Police. But we never apprehended her abductors, it’s still a cold case in both Maryland and Virginia. Now she’s dead, like her mother, seven years before her. Her drowned in the Potomac and her mother killed by some drunk or coward out on the fifteen where it’s crossed by the fifty. That hit and run driver was never found either.” The sheriff paused and looked around the room more curiously, then continued. “I still don’t see anything here to make me believe his death was anything other than a suicide though, in fact I might even say that makes me feel even stronger that it was the last act of a grieving man.”
“Look at the gun cabinet Sheriff, what do you see?”
“Several rifles, a shot gun, and three pistols. Why?”
“See any space there for another one, one not in the cabinet, maybe?”
“NO, so?”
Travis opened the cabinet and pulled open the drawers below and then stepped back. “I’m sure you can see now that Jim reloaded his own ammo and has a fair supply of the material to do it.”
“Okay, and?”
“If you check, there’s nothing here for a thirty-eight caliber weapon of any kind. There’s a reason for that, I know every gun, rifle and weapon Jim owned or once owned and got rid of. He and I talked guns and shooting quite often. Neither one of us would ever buy or own a thirty-eight of any kind.”
“But?”
“No buts Dexter, never, neither of us. Now if ever who did this, is as good as it appears tonight. When you track down the ownership of that thirty-eight-special upstairs, it will either somehow miraculously show up as a recent purchase of Jim’s or it’s reported stolen. I showed you all this, so you would understand, when I say, Bull Shit.”
No one said anything for several seconds then Sheriff Dexter broke the silence saying they needed to return to the men waiting outside. When they got back on the upper floor Travis left the hidden door open and as he walked across the living room he glanced at his friend’s corpse again, lying on the floor, quiet, still and gone now forever.
Outside back at the group of cars, Sheriff Dexter set everyone there to doing their tasks.
Levi turned to look at Travis when they got to his Land Rover. “Know what I saw downstairs, Travis?”
“Yes, you saw that Jim’s sanctuary room looks like a civilian’s version of another one you have seen often. You and no one else, I might add.”
“Yes, one I have told you often, that if the shit ever hits the proverbial fan, you won’t be alone in that room.”
