Searching Part three of the Brandt Family seriesChapter 11
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Searching - Part Three Of The Brandt Family SeriesChapter 5 free porn video
“That definitely is a positive,” said Claire. “Having only 151 cars of that model manufactured should make identifying it much easier.”
Tyler nodded and took another drink of coffee. He had been updating Claire and Dennis in on what Katie had told him about the Corvette over breakfast. They were scheduled to meet with Sheriff Radcliff in a little under an hour, and he wanted the opportunity for them to all to be as informed as possible before the meeting.
Claire continued with what she had learned at the Tiffany’s store, “As I expected Tiffany’s sells only GIA certified diamonds. All diamonds that have been graded by the Gemological Institute of America or GIA carry an engraved serial number. If the purchase really was a gift and the person who received the diamond pendant from our mystery woman has insured it, we might be able to trace her back through that.”
“Any feedback from the man on our first update from yesterday?” Dennis asked.
“No. I doubt that he has even read it yet,” said Claire. They had agreed to take turns sending the daily e-mail update that the AG had demanded, and Claire had offered to do the first one.
“He’s probably too busy with some political event this weekend to pay much attention to what we’re doing,” said Dennis. “I’ll send him an update tonight filling him in on our progress after meeting with the Sheriff. You guys want to ride over to his office together?”
“We might as well,” said Tyler, grinning at Claire. “We can leave our cars here and all fit into that ‘Soccer Mom’ car that you drive.”
“Fine with me,” said Claire. “Maybe I’ll even put the back seat up for you so that you don’t have to sit on the floor. The dog hair should come out of your clothes after only a couple of washes.”
Dennis and Tyler laughed as they rose from their chairs. They both knew that Claire’s car would be as spotless as her desk. Even though she did have two mixed-breed dogs that she trained for agility competitions, she would make certain that any trace of them was cleaned out of her car after transporting them anywhere.
“I’ll take care of the check and meet you guys outside,” said Tyler.
The drive to the headquarters for the Orange County Sheriff’s office took less than five minutes. The parking lot had few cars in it on this Saturday morning, so they were able to park much closer to the front entrance than any weekday visit would have allowed. The lobby doors were secured, but upon pressing the call button next to them, they were buzzed in without any delay.
After signing in with the Sheriff Sergeant at the counter, they were escorted to the Sheriff’s private conference room adjacent to his office. The agents recognized Sheriff Radcliff instantly from his numerous appearances on the nightly news. He had been compared to a younger version of General Dwight Eisenhower during World War II, and even dressed in casual khaki slacks and a sheriff’s department polo shirt, he exuded an air of authority that no one could easily ignore.
Sheriff Radcliff met them at the door to the conference room and shook each agent’s hand before introducing them to the other men in the room. The sheriff and his three detectives looked as if they were all ready for eighteen holes of golf just as soon as this meeting was over. The agents took seats on one side of the table. The sheriff took a seat at the head of it, and his three detectives sat across from the agents. There was an electronic data binder and several file tablets stacked in the center of the conference table between the agents and the sheriff’s detectives.
“Thank you for meeting with us on such short notice,” said Tyler. “We’ll try not to take up too much of your Saturday morning.”
“We’re always happy to oblige another agency,” said Radcliff. “We are surprised that it took y’all so long to show an interest in this case, though.”
“You don’t object to our interest in the Shoreline Mall case?” asked Claire.
The three detectives laughed with the sheriff before he answered, “Hell no. This case had ‘hot potato’ written all over it from the start. Even if we were able to identify and locate the woman who shot the gunman, there is no way that our esteemed District Attorney would have wanted to prosecute her. She’s a bonafide hero in the eyes of everyone except apparently for your boss.”
Claire crossed her arms in a defiant gesture and said, “The District Attorney could have taken her to the Grand Jury, then he would be doing his job and not risk alienating voters. Isn’t that his concern?”
“We discussed that,” admitted Radcliff, “but we felt that even suggesting that the woman had done something wrong by preventing a mass shooting in the mall that day would be perceived as persecution of her, if not outright prosecution. Even the press and television media don’t want us to find her to charge her with anything, they just want to know who she is so they can interview her, dissect her background and runs stories on her to increase their ratings.”
“It doesn’t sound like your hearts were really in this investigation from the beginning,” said Dennis. “Maybe some new and unbiased eyes will find a break.”
The sheriff detective in the middle, who had been introduced as Vern Martin, pushed the data binder and file tablets across the table to place them closer to the agents. “Our hearts and souls go into every case we investigate. Feel free to go through our files with a fine-tooth comb. You won’t find any deficiencies or neglect anywhere.”
Tyler pulled the stack of electronic reports over in front of himself and said, “We’re not looking to judge anybody’s work. We would appreciate your feel for the case and how your investigation was driven based upon the things that you learned along the way. For example, what is your take on the video surveillance files being deleted?”
Vern looked to the sheriff and received a nod, “It was just the first of several strange coincidences that made us suspect that there was a higher power involved in this case.”
Dennis chuckled and asked, “Do you mean that you suspect divine intervention deleted those files?”
Sheriff Radcliff spoke, “By higher power, Vern means a higher political power. Our IT consultant is a doctoral student in ethical hacking at Cal Poly Pomona. He is certain that the alleged ransomware event was staged to hide the involvement of some government agency.”
“Why would some agency like the NSA want to delete those video files?” asked Claire. “Do you suspect that the woman’s identity is being protected by the Feds?”
“I believe that you will come to the same conclusion once you go through the reports and follow up on things yourselves,” said Vern. “Didn’t you ever wonder why we never publicized a sketch of the woman?”
The three agents glanced at each other before Dennis replied for them all, “We assumed that you were holding it back until you identified some suspects to compare it to. You mean to tell us that there is no sketch?”
Vern shook his head and said, “Not even a crayon stick figure. The woman spent almost thirty minutes with the clerk at Tiffany’s while selecting her purchase, but it turns out that the clerk had forgotten to bring her glasses to work that day. Being nearsighted, she could only see things clearly within about fifteen inches from her face. The woman was always across the counter from the clerk, which kept her twenty to twenty-four inches away at all times. The best the clerk could tell us was that the woman had two eyes, one nose, one mouth, and dark hair.”
“Coincidentally,” added the sheriff, “the clerk had never forgotten her glasses before that day and she hasn’t forgotten them since. Our team didn’t get a chance to interview her until the next day, so we can’t dispute her claim that she couldn’t see the woman, but our gut says that someone got to her before we did. ‘A higher power’ as Vern said.”
“Why wasn’t she interviewed that day?” asked Claire.
“There are more than 150 stores in Shoreline Mall,” explained Vern. “We didn’t know which ones the woman may have been in if any. We started with the larger department stores, and each of those had close to a hundred employees that we had to interview to see if anyone had seen her. It took us a week to speak with every employee at every store that had been on duty that day. We got to Tiffany’s the second day, but as the sheriff mentioned, someone else had apparently known about the woman’s purchase and beaten us to the clerk in question.”
Tyler wasn’t positive, but he felt pretty certain that his partners were agreeing with the sheriff’s detectives that some sort of conspiracy was involved. “Okay, what about any attempts to enhance the video files that were obtained? Was your lab able to get a clearer and more defined view of her face?”
“We can count the freckles on her right cheek and the bridge of her nose, but we were never able to get a fuller image of her face,” Vern confirmed for them. “The starfish earring in her ear is unique according to the lab, but we have struck out on trying to identify it. None of the major jewelry chains carry anything like it.”
“What about the car she was driving?” asked Dennis. “Find anything new on that?”
“Not much. The plates aren’t visible in the limited video footage we have so enhancing that isn’t an option. We know only that it is a Chevrolet Corvette, probably a 2016 through 2018 model and it is painted either Ceramic Matrix Gray Metallic or Blade Silver Metallic. The problem is, according to the manufacturer, these cars were frequently sold in one color because it was the only one that the dealer had with the features the customer wanted, and then got re-painted by the customer after the sale. It could have been anything from Torch Red to Racing Yellow in the manufacturer’s records, so we are still left with thousands of possible vehicles. In California alone, there are were more than five thousand 2016 through 2018 Corvettes originally registered. We figure at least eighty percent of those are still registered but have been transferred out of state due to them not meeting the newer emissions standards that limit how often they can be driven. If it was registered in another state, the emissions restrictions wouldn’t apply, but we also wouldn’t have access to the owner records as easily.”
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