Where's Ellen? (Mystery) (MPP A JOE MCFARLAND / GINNY HARRIS MYSTERY Book 1) (15 page)

CHAPTER 33

I
t wasn’t long before they arrived at the regional Carabinieri headquarters in Foggia. At Davis’ request, the officer at the front desk telephoned Sergeant Nazzari, who immediately came to the lobby. He led his three visitors to a small area in the corner of the lobby, which offered some quiet and privacy.

“Good afternoon. I’m Karl Davis, the legal attaché from the U.S. embassy in Rome, and these fine folks are Detectives McFarland and Harris of the Jasper Creek Police Department in Ohio.”

“Buongiorno. Buongiorno. I am Sergeant Nazzari. Welcome to our small city. As you may know, our jurisdiction covers the entire Provincia di Foggia. This includes the town of San Garvazio di Puglia. It is our honor to have you visit us.”

“We, and the entire Jasper Creek police force, want to thank you and your officers for your help,” said Ginny.

“It is our pleasure to help fellow officers, especially those coming from so far away.”

“Well, we appreciate it very much,” added Ginny. “May we see the prisoners now?”

“Si. Si, Come with me. They are in one of our interrogation rooms waiting for you.”

“Great. Thank you,” said Joe. “Could you please have them put in separate rooms? We’d like to speak with them one at a time. Starting with the husband.”

“Si. Si. Un minuto.” Nazzari called one of his subordinates to have the two prisoners placed in separate rooms.

“I’ll wait out here,” said Davis. “I’m sure you’d like a few minutes alone with your long-lost friends.”

Joe and Ginny followed Sergeant Nazzari into the rear of the building where the holding cells and interrogation rooms were located. The door to the room in which Steve was being held was opened from the outside and Joe and Ginny entered.

“Well, hello, Mr. Sanders. Nice to see you again. It’s been quite a while,” said Joe.

“Hello.”

“Before we go any further, we’d like to read you your Miranda rights,” said Joe. “You may have already been read these, but I want to do it again to be sure.”

“Go for it,” responded Steve.

Joe took out a frayed, well-folded slip of paper from his wallet and read, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand each of these rights?”

“Yes, I understand the drill. I did go to law school, you know.”

“Mr. Sanders, we’d like to thank you for your help,” said Ginny. “It, of course, is up to the prosecutor. But we have made him fully aware of your help, and we’re confident that it will be very beneficial to you when it’s time for your sentencing to be decided.”

“Yes, that’s nice. But that’s not why I did it. I sent you that fax, Detective Harris, because I couldn’t live with myself anymore. I, in fact we, have always been very ethical people. I couldn’t stand walking around with the guilt, as well as the fear of being caught, every day. I didn’t and still don’t want to get Ellen in any more trouble than she’s already gotten herself, and me, into, but I couldn’t go on living that way. I still can’t believe the plot she concocted nor the fact that later on I so meekly allowed myself to be drawn into it.”

“We understand,” said Ginny. “And we commend you for your ethical action. We know it couldn’t have been easy.”

“Nothing about this whole nightmare has been easy.”

“We understand that you were not a part of the plan from the beginning. That you only got dragged into it all later on.”

“Yes, but I surely didn’t fight the temptation hard enough.”

“Yeah, but to be honest,” said Joe, “I had the right instinct, but for the wrong reason.”

“What do you mean?”

“This whole time I thought that you were the primary perp or were at least fully involved from the beginning.”

“Yes. And it turned out that you really weren’t involved and didn’t know anything until way after the initial crime was committed,” added Ginny.

“Mr. Sanders,” continued Joe. “You won’t have to testify against your wife. In fact, spousal privilege prohibits you from being required to do so. But your sending that fax to Detective Harris indicating where we could find you was an effective way for you to end this nightmare without doing anything that even resembles testifying against your wife.”

Joe asked Ginny for the fax, which Ginny retrieved from her carry-on case. Taking the fax from a clear plastic folder, Joe put it in front of Steve and asked, “Is this the fax that you sent to Detective Harris? If so, please read it out loud and then sign and date the small piece of paper stapled here to the envelope.”

Steve first read the fax silently to himself and then read it aloud:

Detective Harris, the large house in the hills overlooking San Garvazio di Puglia, Italy.

Sincerely,

Charles Johnson, a.k.a. Steve S.

“Yes, this is the fax I sent.”

“OK, thanks, Mr. Sanders,” said Ginny, who retrieved the fax after Steve signed and dated the piece of paper stapled to the envelope. We’re now going to spend a few minutes with your wife. For your information, during the flight over here, we decided that we would not at this point tell her that we found you two as a result of your fax. You can keep that a secret from her, at least for now, or tell her yourself — whichever you prefer. We’ll be back shortly to begin our trip back to the U.S.”

“OK,” replied Steve.

Back in the hallway, Joe and Ginny continued their discussion.

“It’s too bad,” said Ginny. “He seems like a good guy who just got caught in a bad situation — all caused by his wife.”

“I agree. But the fact is that even if he wasn’t involved early on, he sure learned to love the Italian lifestyle pretty quick, and he didn’t exactly race to contact us once he found out what was going on.”

“Come on, Joe. Do you really think most spouses in this same situation would turn in their so-called better half? OK, so it took him awhile, but he did wind up doing the right thing.”

“I don’t know what most spouses would do. But that’s exactly what they should do, both legally and morally.”

“Probably so. But we’re not all angels like you are.”

“I know. And that’s why I hate wearing hats.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a bitch getting the hat to fit right with that damn halo always floating three inches above my head.”

“Yeah, life must be really tough for angels like you,” said Ginny as she chuckled. “OK, let’s go visit the sweet Mrs. What’s our play?”

“We need to be a little lucky,” responded Joe. “Since her husband can’t testify against her, we’ll be best off if we can get her to confess. I’m still confident we can build a solid enough case for conviction if we need to by digging through all her actions and the money flows, but a confession would be a whole lot simpler.”

“And faster,” added Ginny. “As we agreed on the plane, it’s probably best not to even mention her husband’s fax. We’ll let her think that you were successful in tracing some of their financial moves and attempts to collect on her life insurance. If she believes that, she might confess in the hopes of reducing her prison sentence.”

“Sounds like the plan we agreed to. Let’s do it,” said Joe.

CHAPTER 34

E
ntering the interrogation room in which Ellen was sitting, Joe walked up to her and said, “Hello, Mrs. Sanders. I’m Detective McFarland and this is Detective Harris. We’re with the Jasper Creek Police Department. I am
very
sincere when I say that it is truly our pleasure to meet you.”

“Very funny!” fumed Ellen in response.

“I must say,” said Ginny. “You gave us quite a chase for quite a long time. But, all good things must come to an end.”

“Yes,” said Joe. “Your high-paid legal team put up a first-class extradition fight, but in the end ‘justice prevailed.’ ”

“How’d you find us?” asked Ellen. “I thought we had truly disappeared after all this time.”

“We didn’t have to do much. We just sat back and waited for your greed to do you in.”

“What do you mean?”

“First we’d better read you your Miranda rights. You may have already been read these, but I want to do it again to be sure.” Joe again took out the frayed, slip of paper from his wallet and read Ellen her rights. “Do you understand each of these rights?”

“Yes, of course I do. I do speak English you know.”

“Very well,” continued Joe. “Back to your question about your greed. You two had millions of dollars in cash and investments, plus a home probably worth another $1 million-plus, before you started this,” Joe explained.

“And, then on top of all that, you cheated the insurance company out of $5 million for the so-called ransom for the so-called kidnapping,” added Ginny.

“Then your greed kicked in above and beyond all that,” continued Joe. “Even though your life insurance policy through Tycon Technologies was cancelled when your employment with them ended, you still had your privately purchased life insurance policies. With the help of the FBI, and their coordination with several other countries through Interpol, we were able to follow the trail you left trying to collect on these private life insurance policies. Your greed wouldn’t even let you wait for the number of years required to pass before you normally could be legally declared dead.”

“But we didn’t collect on any of these policies,” protested Ellen. “My husband may have tried, but he couldn’t provide the proof of death or the evidence of my having been declared legally dead that they required.”

“True, but the insurance companies informed us and the FBI when your attorneys made their initial inquiries,” explained Joe. “By the way, you were very smart to have only your husband deal with these attorneys. That way, the attorneys couldn’t be accused, and, in fact, weren’t aware, of being involved in an illegal insurance scam.

“Pen registers and trap and trace devices were authorized and set up to record all the phone numbers these attorneys called and all the phone numbers from which they received calls. Attorney-client privilege prevented collection of the conversations, but not the listings of every phone number called and called from. This information led us to you in San Garvazio di Puglia. No amount of money was ever enough for you. You surely didn’t need these last few millions, especially while living in this low-cost area. But your greed wouldn’t let you leave any money on the table. You had to try to get your grubby little hands on every last penny as soon as possible.”

“What do you mean? Those were legitimate insurance policies, and our attorneys followed the letter of the law trying to collect, including the cumbersome process of trying to have someone declared dead after a mysterious and lengthy disappearance,” countered Ellen.

“Your lawyers may have followed the law, but you surely didn’t. You faked your kidnapping and disappearance,” responded Joe.

“I did no such thing. I merely went away without telling anyone. And that’s not illegal. As you said earlier, it was my husband, not me, who had the lawyers trying to collect on the life insurance policies.”

“Yeah, and you probably also claim not to have had anything to do with your fake kidnapping. In any event,” continued Ginny, “Detective McFarland’s patience and stubbornness paid off. For all this time, at his request, your insurance companies were on notice to inform us if and when there were any inquiries or requests for these policies to pay out. Once we were notified, we were able to track the phone calls made. From there, it was relatively easy to identify and follow the trail to you here in Italy.”

“Damn. I thought we were being so careful, even from the very beginning,” muttered Ellen. “I even realized that I was probably being followed when I was going to meet Steve at that restaurant outside Dayton that time and I decided not to show up.”

“Well, you were wrong on that account also. We were, in fact, tailing Steve that evening, but we weren’t following you. We had no idea where you were. In any event, despite all the planning you did and the care you took with trying to collect the life insurance proceeds, our interest was strong enough to get this raised to a priority level at Interpol and the various national police forces. Of course, you, or, since you were missing, your husband, not having filed any tax returns for the past two years, despite the massive income from cashing out all the Tycon stock and deferred compensation as well as all your investments and your husband’s equity from his law firm, captured the IRS’ full attention and they joined us in requesting the FBI’s and Interpol’s help.”

“If you only had had the willpower to walk away from those last few millions, you’d most likely still be living in your little Italian make-believe world,” added Ginny.

“Given that Tycon was about to fire me for no reason, I think I was entitled to whatever I could get.”

“What exactly are you admitting to?” asked Joe.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I think I’ve answered enough questions for now.”

“That’s fine,” said Ginny. “We have more information than we need for a conviction.”

“I’m so happy for you. What now?” asked Ellen.

“Well, you and we will be heading back to the U.S.,” responded Ginny. “There is one other thing, however. It’s totally up to you, and you should talk with your lawyers first. If you sign a written confession now, it will very likely help you when it comes to the judge deciding the length of your prison term.”

“But what if I fight this and am found not guilty?”

“Fat chance,” said Joe. “We have so much evidence related to the movements of the money from the fake kidnapping and to your attempts to illegally collect on your life insurance proceeds that conviction is almost certain. Prosecutors will be fighting with each other to be assigned to your trial. Prosecutors love slam dunks.”

“Do you really think I’ll get a lesser sentence if I confess?”

“Yes, most definitely,” answered Ginny. “We, of course, can’t guarantee it. But we have seen that when we report a cooperative suspect who confesses, the prosecutor almost always lowers his or her requested punishment, and the judge just about always goes along with that.”

“And if I’m willing to confess?”

“We’d need you to hand write your confession now and then sign and date it in front of witnesses,” explained Ginny.

“Let me think about it.” And a few seconds later, “OK, I’ve thought about it. Hell, no, I won’t confess. How dumb do you think I am? I don’t believe your BS about it getting me a lighter sentence. I’m well aware that the police are allowed to lie to a suspect to get a confession. I’ll take my chances in court.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk with your attorneys first”? asked Joe.

“No. I’ve made my decision. What the hell do the damn lawyers know! They couldn’t even prevent our extradition back to the U.S.”

Joe and Ginny gave each other a knowing look, after which Ginny said, “Come on. Our Italian vacation is coming to an end. We’ve got to get you to the airport and back to the good ol’ U.S. of A.”

After a final round of thank-yous and good-byes with Sergeant Nazzari, the necessary pile of papers was signed, and two detectives and one legal attaché, along with a married couple, each spouse wearing his and her own pair of handcuffs, headed for the airport. A quick good-bye with Karl Davis and a smooth transit through Passport Control, then they quickly boarded the plane, ahead of all the other passengers.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts and make sure….”