Criminal Witness: A Milo Powell Mystery

By T.W. Person

Veteran private investigator Milo Powell and his attractive grad student assistant weave their way through money laundering, gangs, and murder in a Midwest college town. Russian organized crime and black gangsters do the street work as a large corporation protects its interests while it launders drug money from Detroit and Chicago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499017700

T.W. Person

T.W. Person is a retired private investigator and veteran of the Top Secret USAF Russian Voice Intercept program during the Cold War. His personal insights and experiences contribute to the content of his novels and serve as inspiration for his stories. He has received awards for his Cold War efforts as well as being presented with the Investigator of the Year award in 2013.

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PART ONE

University City

Midwest, USA

ONE

As a criminal defense investigator appointed by the court, Milo Powell was looking into a first-degree burglary and robbery charge where his client had been accused of breaking into a second-story apartment, threatening the occupant with a knife, and eventually leaving with her purse. The defendant was known to hang around that apartment complex and had been identified by the victim as a maybe from a photo lineup. Powell had interviewed a few people living in the apartments who were familiar with the defendant but had not yet interviewed the accuser. The prosecution uses the term victim, but defense attorneys prefer to call them accuser.

The jail roster listed the suspect as homeless. Trial information said he lived in a blue tent near a bike trail not far from the area of those apartments. One of the residents there described how to get this camp. Go down the bike trail, then take another trail that goes off to the left, and it’s down there in the woods, she instructed. Knowing that meeting the people and seeing the actual places surrounding an alleged crime helps to visualize and better understand what might have happened, Powell wanted to see that tent.

Walnut Avenue made a ninety-degree turn to the left, becoming Fourth Street. A yellow sign next to black-and-white striped traffic barricades announced the bike trail was closed at the bridge—probably as a result of floods earlier in the year. Powell could see the railings of a bridge about two hundred yards ahead from the end of Walnut Avenue. Most likely, there was not much use being made of that portion of the bike trail—at least not by bicycles.

The trail was not one of those asphalt miniature thoroughfares fashioned from a former railroad right-of-way but was of gravel and at this point led between an apartment complex and a fenced-in parking lot for county maintenance vehicles. Weeds grew up alongside and surrounded the small trees close to the trail. East of the trail, small trees gave way to larger ones as the area became rather rural, complete with a wandering stream. It was isolated enough for homeless people to live without interference from those who had homes not far away.

The detective parked his Silverado pickup in the lot of an apartment complex alongside the beginning portion of the bike trail. It was early fall, and the trees and weeds were a mixture of greens, yellows, and browns. They were also bent and broken from a season of storms and wind. The tent might be difficult to find.

He locked the pickup and walked approximately thirty yards down the gravel bike trail to where a wide mud lane led off to the left just as the witness had said. Two parallel paths were worn through the thick grass of the clearing and were accented by tire marks from some sort of large tractor. Deer tracks dotted the narrow paths. As Powell started into the area, he began to feel the isolation, the sense of being alone in the outdoors. In the timber during a deer hunt, this would be a pleasant sensation. But here, so close to civilization and given the circumstances, that feeling was mixed with mild anxiety. He had been in homeless camps before and knew the unexpected could be expected for strangers who wander into them.

The paths went on for probably a quarter of a mile. The apartment buildings behind him dwindled in size. As he walked, peering from side to side into the weeds and trees, he shielded his eyes from the sun with both hands. The weeds were thicker now, and he could imagine the mosquitoes and other vermin which must inhabit these parts. Small narrow side trails in the grass meandered here and there… just wide enough for an opossum or a raccoon. Or maybe a human. At the end of the clearing was what looked like a small dump site. There were two large concrete culverts maybe ten feet long and four or five feet tall lying side by side in the weeds at the edge of the trees. It seemed an ideal spot for the homeless. But it wasn’t what he was looking for. Ahead, he spotted a rusted old brush hog mower overgrown by weeds. It had no doubt served its time and was now covered by the brush it was born to eliminate.

This area appeared to be the end of the trail. After searching thirty yards farther into the trees and finding nothing resembling a blue tent, he started back, looking again from side to side. The sun made it difficult to see into the wooded areas, so maybe the tent was in there someplace, and he just didn’t see it… or maybe not. Maybe the police had confiscated it for whatever reason. Maybe somebody decided to move it to a better spot now that its former occupant was living in a house provided by the county.

As Powell got back to within seventy-five yards or so of the bike trail, he heard voices. They sounded like young people, but he couldn’t tell how many or how far away they might be. It seemed strange because there really wasn’t anything over there in that direction except the trail and weeds. He walked toward the sounds, and as the voices became louder, he wasn’t sure what language he was hearing. A loud female voice suddenly became a frightening scream, then a shout of No, Michael! No! Instinctively, Powell stepped next to the closest tree hiding himself from whatever. No, please! came the cry again.

Peering around the tree he saw silhouetted against the sun the shape of a female sitting on the ground with her left hand extended, fingers upward and her head hanging down. Her right hand was straight down beside her. A male figure stood over her, feet widespread and hands hanging down. Powell froze and pulled back to the safety of the tree. He was wearing a dark colored jacket and blue jeans, so he felt relatively obscure to anyone not looking for him. The screaming resumed. The language was unrecognizable once again and apparently unheard by anyone. He stood with his back against the tree. What should he do?

After what seemed longer in time than it was, Powell eased his face once again around the tree, and this time saw the male striding angrily back toward Walnut Avenue. His steps were long and his gait quick. It sounded as if he were cursing although the PI had no idea what he was saying. Once again, Powell’s instincts kicked in and he began to memorize the man’s facial features, hair, and what he was wearing. He appeared to be of Mideastern heritage in his early twenties with thick black hair, approximately six feet tall and weighing about 185 pounds. He was wearing a long-sleeved orange-and-green-striped sweater and beige khaki trousers. His sleeves were pulled up to the elbow on both arms. He had something—a rock maybe—in his right hand. He flung it across his body into the small trees nearby and again shouted something strange as he continued on toward Walnut Avenue and out of sight.

After he had passed, the detective looked back to where he had seen the two of them together. The female was gone. Powell’s mind was whirling. Had he maybe beaten her unconscious and kicked her off the trail into the ditch? Had she gotten up and left or maybe pulled herself on her stomach into some sort of cover? Gotta call 911, he told himself. He took out his cell phone and punched in the three digits. Busy signal.

Tangled thoughts raced through his head. Cops don’t like defense investigator types much, and he didn’t want to answer a lot of questions from law enforcement people; he didn’t want to become a prosecution witness. Maybe it was just an animated quarrel, he thought. Maybe it would all work out. He wasn’t close enough to really determine if the female had indeed been injured.

Just then, out of the corner of his eye, as he virtually hugged the large cottonwood tree, he saw the male coming back up the trail. His pace was still animated, but he had ceased uttering curses. As he hurried back to where the female had been, he bent down two or three times and picked up something. Stones? Powell had seen video of a Muslim female who had been unfaithful and was stoned to death by a crowd. It was an unforgettably horrific sight. Was he going back to stone her?

He punched in 911 again but hung up before it rang. He had to get a better vantage point to see what if anything more was going to happen. There were binoculars in his truck. Crouching, Powell hurried across the grass and weeds to the parking lot and his pickup. He could see the pair still wrestling. They were upright now. The male was pulling at her arm, and she was trying to get away, bent down and spinning around him in a circle. Powell reached into the backseat for his binoculars. They weren’t there! As he looked back down the trail, the two of them had stopped fighting and were walking toward the bridge. It was a couple football fields or so away, but there was a clear view down the trail. He could now see the pink top and dark slacks the female was wearing. The male had hold of her left arm and was guiding her down into the weeds alongside the bridge abutment. He was ushering her off the trail. It was reminiscent of a scene in a movie.

The detective thought about calling 911 again. But what if he did? He had worked numerous assaults and domestic abuse cases and could picture the squad car parked next to his truck with a couple of officers trekking off down the bike trail talking into their shoulder radios and calling for more policemen. What if they never found either of these two? Worse yet, what if they did? Or maybe found one of them dead? He’d be in the middle of a criminal case and sitting on the State’s side in a trial. Not something he wanted at all.

Both these individuals walked away together from everything he had witnessed, but he needed to see if there was more going on. He wasn’t convinced he should call 911 right now.

Suddenly, the female in the pink top burst out of the brush from where they had entered the weeds. She was running down the bike trail directly at his truck, looking back over her shoulder as she ran. She slowed to a stop, still looking back. What the hell was going on? He thought he could make out a dark form lying on the side of the trail, but it was a long way away. For several minutes, the girl just stood there looking back. She turned and cautiously began returning to the form on the ground, holding both arms out slightly as if she were not sure what was about to happen.

The girl knelt down, slowly extended her right hand, and touched the form on the ground. She leaned over the figure and put her head down on it. She stayed in that position a short while and then stood back up, still looking down at the figure.

Powell went over in his mind what he had seen and heard. Arguing, pleading, anger, fear, panic, and now silence. Was this girl a victim or perpetrator? Could he have prevented any of this? Should he have done something? This being a large college town, many races and ethnicities were present, and some of them have their own definitions of what men and women can do to each other without recourse from outsiders.

He was considered to be a good investigator, but knowing that being a good investigator does not necessitate inherent hero-type reactions, he decided if any of this ever came out on the news or in the papers, he could always come forward then and describe what he had seen if it were really that serious.

The girl began walking toward his truck. He slumped down in the seat and waited until she got about twenty feet away then threw open the driver side door. Startled, her arms flew up, and she stared straight at him.

She was a pretty girl with long black hair and large brown eyes. She appeared to be in her midtwenties, maybe five-foot-seven or eight and about one-forty or one-fifty. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her face was streaked with dirt and makeup. There were specks of something that looked like blood on her pink T-shirt.

Can I help you, ma’am? Powell asked.

For a moment, she just glared at him. Then without a word, she took off running again, this time through the weeds back behind the fence surrounding the maintenance yard. She ran until he lost sight of her far in the distance behind some one-story brick buildings with white trim.

As he stood in front of his truck wondering what had just happened, he glanced back down the bike trail. The form he had seen on the ground was gone.

Come on! he said to himself out loud. What the hell is this?

Giant cottonwoods and elms formed a gauntlet high above the gravel bike trail. Their shadows dotted the ground. Instincts told Powell there was something near that old bridge he needed to see. Those instincts also told him to be careful—at least cautious. Reaching in his jacket, he felt for the Sig Sauer .40 caliber tucked in the shoulder holster under his left arm, and started toward the bridge. Expecting a surprise at any moment, he headed for the spot where he had seen the form on the ground, taking deliberate steps with eyes flitting side to side.

Moving even more slowly as he neared the bridge, he stooped and began concentrating more on the ground in front of him. What am I looking for? What do I expect to find? Is there danger here? Anxious thoughts flashed through his mind. He stood up, took a deep breath, and lowered his hand from the grip of the .40 caliber. It appeared he was alone.

The pea gravel surface of the trail wasn’t the best for preserving any clues as to what or where anything might have taken place. The long grass near the corner of the bridge appeared to be packed down, even trampled. It led down toward the streambed and under the bridge. He searched the grass for any trace of blood or any sign of a physical confrontation. Nothing. He wondered what waited beneath.

It was spooky under the broken and twisted wooden timbers of the old bridge. Sunlight peered through at uneven intervals and the swaying trees moved the shadows back and forth. Back toward the creek bank, there was room to stand under the bridge and a large rectangular area of the ground was flat—obviously someone had worked on it and was frequenting this location on a fairly regular basis. You could even imagine a dozen or more individuals here at the same time. Empty foam coffee cups, sandwich wrappers, and beer cans lay piled in a cardboard box in one corner. Powell thought he could smell cologne. It was as if someone had just been there.

With all that had happened and finding this hidden camp of sorts, he had forgotten the reason he was here in the first place: his client and his homeless home in the tent. Maybe his client knew something of this place. He would ask him. None of what he had just seen and found would be entered into the official log of this case, but it would be lodged in Powell’s memory. He photographed the bridge scene with his cell phone and e-mailed the photos to himself. If anything came out in the media in the next few days, he could always contact the authorities then if he thought there was anything he could add.

Walking back toward his pickup, he was trying to put together the pieces of what had happened. Once inside the truck, he took out his notebook and jotted down the license plate numbers of all the vehicles parked near the head of the trail. The trail is several miles from the college campus, so if the two people he saw were connected with the school, maybe one or both of them had driven there. The girl ran away, and Michael didn’t come back out of the woods that he knew of. He would run the plates through the DOT and maybe get a lead as to who they were.

As he backed out of the parking space and waited to enter the street, a city cop drove down Walnut. His yellow left turn signal told all in his path that he was going to change direction. What a clever invention, turn signals, he thought. The cop turned east onto Fourth Street. He didn’t look Powell’s way. He had no reason to, he told himself as his Silverado pulled out onto Walnut in the direction it had come from. It was time to talk to this alleged robbery victim.

TWO

At about 10:00 a.m. the next day, Powell went to visit the accuser.

Mary Isabelle Famar lived in apartment 309 of 1837 Fourth Street—the same complex where he had parked the day before. Number 309 was on the top floor of a brown and tan wood frame building which housed twenty-four units. There were eight apartments per floor, four on each side of a long corridor running down the middle. A stairway led down from each end of the corridor, and it appeared every apartment had a balcony.