Russell Atkinson's Blog, page 100

My Lady Judge by Cora Harrison

My Lady Judge by Cora Harrison

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The lady judge of the title is Mara, a Brehon in medieval Ireland. She runs a law school and is courted by the local king. The names of characters and places are all Gaelic. All these aspects make the book unique in my experience and I was not entirely comfortable with it at first. It was a struggle to remember who was who when I couldn’t recognize the female names from the male. I still have no idea of the geography and I’ve never been a fan of historical fiction. It also is a rather slow-paced book. Mara seems overly interested in flowers for my taste, especially those blue gentians. So at first I was rather impatient with the book. Had it not been for the fact it was chosen for my book group, I might not have finished it.

I’m glad I did. The gentle pace grew on me after a while and I certainly appreciated the lack of cursing, torture, and crudeness one finds in too many mysteries these days. Eventually I was able to distinguish almost all the characters and the careful and detailed development of each. As an attorney, the discussion of Brehon law was fascinating to me, although I have no way of knowing how accurate the author’s portrayal of it is. The chief distinction from English criminal law seems to be that punishment is always a fine and depends heavily on the victim’s “honour price.” There is no imprisonment or death penalty, even for murder. Don’t be misled. There is a murder early on and that forms the central plot line, so true mystery fans will have their raw meat to chew on. But the author likes to take us on a history lesson disguised as a detective story and I fell for her ploy. She hid the pill inside the candy very well.

View all my reviews

Ambiguity

From time to time I feel compelled to decry the declining state of the English language. For those who wonder why people like me care about grammar, it’s because it’s important for several reasons. Bad grammar leads to misunderstanding. This can be, and usually is, trivial, but at times can be dangerous, even lethal.

Recently I heard a news report of the investigation of the AirAsia crash over the Java Sea. While trying to correct from a stall, the pilot, a non-native English speaker, yelled to the co-pilot to “pull down” on his stick. The co-pilot, a native French speaker, understood the word “pull” to mean pull up, which he did, resulting in the crash. The normal instructions are to push down or pull up. The pilot’s instruction conflated the two. This is a contradiction ambiguity. One of the funniest television comedies ever, Twenty Twelve, had a running gag where Hugh Bonneville’s wishy-washy character responds to every suggestion or complaint with “Yes, no, absolutely.”

More common forms of ambiguity are syntactic and semantic ambiguity. Semantic ambiguity involves using a word or phrase with more than one meaning. I remember my high school English teacher’s favorite example of semantic ambiguity: “A case of beer was mysteriously left on the front step of the police station. The chief is working on the case.” A well-known one used humorously is “The peasants are revolting.” In these examples, the words “case” and “revolting” can have more than one meaning.

Syntactic ambiguity is where the sentence structure creates the confusion.  For example, “The horse raced past the barn fell.” The reader could think the speaker means “The horse raced past; the barn fell.” The correct reading is “The horse (that was) raced past the barn fell.” Since the word “fell” is also a British dialect word for a field or moor, a semantic ambiguity is also present, where the reader thinks the horse raced past a field referred to as the barn fell. Headlines, due to their shortened structure, often exemplify this type of ambiguity, e.g. “Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim.”

However, the most frequent syntactic ambiguity in my experience in everyday speech is the dependent clause placed at the beginning of a sentence. For example, “Because of their inherently dangerous nature, commercial passenger aircraft are not permitted to carry lithium batteries.” Dependent clauses at the beginning of a sentence should refer to the subject that immediately follows, not the predicate, but people say this wrong all the time. Here the word dangerous is probably meant to refer to the batteries, but aircraft are inherently dangerous, too. I hear news reporters screw this up constantly. “Like any corrupt official, the mayor wants the police chief replaced.” The reporter is actually characterizing the mayor as corrupt, not the police chief, although she probably means the opposite. This ambiguity can be easily eliminated by placing the clause at the end of the sentence where it is closer to the thing it modifies.

Yet another form of semantic ambiguity is the wrong word or malapropism. It’s not a word with two meanings; it’s when the speaker uses a similar word with a different meaning. The term malapropism is named after Mrs. Malaprop, a scatterbrained character in Sheridan’s play The Rivals. A real-life example I recall from law school was the sign on a building on Telegraph Avenue that read “Stationary department has moved.” As written, it’s an oxymoron as well. Stationary things don’t move. They meant, of course, the stationery department. In fact this might be a fair description of what happened with the AirAsia flight. If the pilot’s native language did not have words with the exact meanings of push and pull in English, the word “pull” to him might have been equivalent to something in his native language that meant something like “move [something] with your hand” but not necessarily towards you.

So please be careful in how you phrase things, whether in writing or speaking, especially when giving instructions. Geocachers, reread those cache descriptions and logs before you post them. Think about whether someone could misinterpret what you said. “It’s on the left side.” Really? And that’s if you’re walking north or south on the trail?

The Summons by John Grisham

The Summons by John Grisham

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the third book by Grisham involving mass torts that I’ve read, although it’s not a commanding thread in the story. I enjoyed it, but that’s helped by the fact I’m a lawyer. It was, however, repetitive of the same sort of stuff in The King of Torts, a book I read first, although it was written after this one. Still I wonder if that’s what most people are interested in.

I was looking for a mystery. This does start with a death; a retired judge suffering from terminal cancer is found dead, apparently from a morphine overdose. Was it suicide? A mercy killing? The cancer? Or murder? This question is complicated by the three million dollars in cash found in his house.

The charm of the book lies in its depiction of rural southern life. Grisham is from Mississippi and his love for the deep south shows in his writing. I found the ending rather unsatisfying, but at this point in his career, Grisham has reached journeyman status in his prose and is able to move the reader along pleasantly enough. It’s not his best work, but you could pass a day or three whipping through this one and not feel cheated.

View all my reviews

GUT SHOT – Episode 32

Gut Shot – Episode 32

© Russell Atkinson 2015

The next day I got only one call back, an ERT agent I didn’t know. He asked me what it was about and I explained who I was and what I was doing. He said he didn’t want to talk to me and hung up. So much for my irresistible charm.

I went back to my regular work. By Wednesday evening I’d almost forgotten about the case. I’d received a fat check for a job I’d finished two months ago. For these Internet companies that can produce instantaneous results to a search, they sure are slow to pay. I celebrated by going home early and taking Ellen out to dinner. Tommy stayed home with a sitter, a teenage girl who lived on our block. When we got home she asked me if I carried a gun. She knew I’d been in the FBI. I told her no, not any more. She said she liked to shoot and even went deer hunting with her father once.

That reminded me of Huntress. I went online and checked that police instructors’ forum again. There was a reply to my private message to Bubo, only instead of replying using the messaging feature, he had replied using the personal email I had set up for her. He told her that he was familiar with the Two Fugitive Extraction Scenario and had used it. He said it was a good scenario, but added the warning, “Stick with the basic scenario and avoid the modified one.” Whoa, Nelly! There’s a modified version? And why should one avoid it, pray tell? My antennae went up. Bubo went on to ask her if she still hunted moose and did she also like to hunt deer. He wondered whether she ever got to California, then said he was including a link she might find interesting. He ended with a winking emoticon and the link. I clicked on it. It was a picture of Chris Bobu, shirt off, standing next to a stag he had presumably killed. I had to admit, his pecs and biceps were quite impressive.

Holy moly! Now I had proof Bubo was actually Bobu, not that I really doubted it. And he was flirting with me! The dirty dog was trying to get Huntress out to California for a hunting trip. No doubt he had a secluded cabin in mind. Bobu was married, I was pretty sure.

I immediately replied. I asked what the modified version of the scenario was and why he didn’t recommend it. I said that I’d never been to California but had always wanted to. I added my own wink emoticon. I couldn’t help but laugh inwardly, thinking of what Bobu’s reaction would be if he only knew it was me he was flirting with.

I stayed up late waiting to see if he would reply, but there was nothing that night. The following day I had a thick envelope waiting for me at the office from my insurance company. It had come in the mail late the previous day, after I’d gone home. It was a letter declaring that they were undertaking to defend me on the civil action by the Leung woman and gave me the name of the attorney who would be representing me, a Hiram Twomey. I’d never heard of him, so I looked him up in the state bar website. He was a partner in a large firm in Oakland that I’d also never heard of. He’d graduated from Empire College School of Law. I’d never heard of that either, so I did some more checking. It was accredited by the state bar, but not by the American Bar Association. Not much of an endorsement, but the guy passed the bar and was a partner in a trial firm apparently with years of experience. It was the insurance company’s money, anyway, so I didn’t much care. I expected they’d settle for a couple of thousand as a nuisance fee. There were some forms to fill in and sign, which I did.

I called Bert and told him about the exchange with Bubo-slash-Bobu. I asked if he had received through discovery a scenario write-up for the Two Fugitive Extraction exercise. He said he had, but that it didn’t say anything other than to do it with no loaded weapons present, to use at least three arresting agents, and to have the less-dangerous fugitive try to flee if given the chance. It was a single short paragraph. That’s what had happened in Woody’s exercise, so far as he could tell. It appeared that the scenario was run according to the official plan, other than someone introducing the bag and gun.

I told him he should request or subpoena a copy of the Modified Two Fugitive Extraction scenario. He thought about it and said before he did that, he wanted me to follow up with Bobu using my fake identity. He didn’t want to tip his hand to the prosecution yet. I told him I’d already put in my two hours, but that if I got a reply from Bobu, I’d let him know what he said.

I thanked him for helping with the insurance claim. He asked me who my counsel was and I told him about Hiram Twomey.

“Twomey? Really? Let me ask you something. Did they include a reservation of rights in that packet they sent?”

I didn’t know what that was, so he explained it to me. In insurance law, the company is typically obligated to pay for the claims if the insured is found liable of negligence or most other torts. There’s an exception, however, for some intentional torts like assault and battery. It’s against public policy. That’s so that a person cannot insure himself against liability for those actions and go around beating or raping people with impunity. The whole point of punitive damages is to punish and deter those who might intentionally do nasty things, like torture animals in this case, not to compensate the plaintiff, so it has to come out of the personal pocket of the defendant to serve its purpose. Depending on the terms of the policy, even with negligence claims, the company may be liable for actual damages, such as medical bills of the plaintiff, but not for punitive damages. It’s also possible that not all causes of actions are included in the policy, either. However, the insurance company is required to notify the insured that they are reserving their right not to be held liable for those damages. That’s what Bert was talking about. I looked through the paperwork. There was a reservation of rights.

After I told him yes, he replied, “You need Cumis counsel. Know any good trial attorneys in the Oakland area?”

I had heard the term before but had only the vaguest notion of what it was. The Cumis decision had come down while I was still in law school, but after I had taken a tort class, so I never heard it explained.

“So what is that again? I remember there was a case …”

“Your insurance company is trying to screw you. They see this case as one where the actual damages, the economic value of the dog, is minimal but the potential for punitive damages is high. A rich white guy like you before an Oakland jury – if they believe you tortured the dog, or even if they just don’t like you, they could hit you for five figures, even six or seven in punitives. The company hired an operator like Twomey to see that if it goes to trial the damages are characterized that way so the company doesn’t have to pay. Under Cumis you have the right to hire your own attorney to protect you against that.”

“I’d have the right to hire my own attorney even if I didn’t have insurance. What’s the point of insurance, then?”

“One: they can probably negotiate a low settlement if you’re lucky, and they’ll pay that; two, and here’s the one you’ll like: they have to pay the fees of the Cumis counsel. That’s what the court ruling said.”

“So you know this Twomey guy?”

“Oh, yeah. He’s a one hundred percent insurance loyalist. His whole firm is. It’s partly owned by the insurance company. You need me, buddy boy.”

“And they have to pay?”

“They do. I’m twice the rate for regular insurance defense counsel, so they’ll probably kick and claim you aren’t entitled to Cumis counsel, but I’ll take that risk. It’ll cost you … nothing.”

The long pause at the end was too significant to ignore. “Nothing except … ?” I asked.

“Just stay with me to follow up on this modified scenario thing. At your regular rate. You’ll get paid for investigating and I get paid for defending you. It’s a win-win.”

“Unless you lose the case for me and I get hit with that seven-figure judgment that my insurance doesn’t cover.”

“O ye of little faith. Have I failed you yet?”

“I seem to recall a certain incident at the OPD.”

“I took care of that. You’re off the hook. So am I your Cumis counsel or not? If you don’t want me, then get someone else, but don’t rely on Hiram Twomey.”

“Okay, okay. You’re hired.”

“Send me a copy of the civil complaint. I have to notify the insurance company that I’ve been hired as Cumis counsel. They’ll probably try to claim you don’t have a Cumis right, but I won’t charge you no matter what. As long as you stay on the case.”

“Such a deal.”

“So do yourself a favor and look into this Leung woman, would you? Hiram isn’t going to hire an investigator to go after her, I can tell you that. If she’s swearing to the police she saw you kill the dog, she’s dodgy. There’s something there to find.”

“I had Maeva do a criminal check on her and she’s clean there. I’ll have her send you the background on Leung and the two thugs, I mean, ‘witnesses’.”

“Do that.”

So now I was back in the case big time. Ellen wasn’t going to like it and I certainly didn’t either, but I knew in my gut that it was what I needed to do. I couldn’t leave that question unanswered about the modified scenario. What was Bobu getting at there?

First, though, I had to watch out for number one. I reread the civil complaint from Leung. She was claiming that the dog was a pedigreed pure bred pit bull worth thousands. I knew Maeva was better at online searching than I was, so I asked her to check that out, to look for a website or breeders’ registry that might confirm Leung had a legitimate breeding operation. She asked me what account to bill her time to, and I told her to make it admin time. I couldn’t charge a client for this.

I still had no return calls from the ERT personnel I’d left messages for, but I remembered that Rory Zimmer had said he’d be willing to talk to me. I called him again. It took me forever waiting on hold before he picked up. It seems that mechanics in the middle of a greasy job don’t like to drop everything for a phone call. When he came on the phone, though, he was cordial and reiterated that he’d be happy to talk with me on the weekend. He couldn’t take the time in the middle of the workday. Rory had always liked me ever since he got sued by for an auto accident that happened while he was driving the Bureau tow truck. He was in the scope of employment, so I handled it as a legal advisor and we settled with the plaintiff. It was a simple case, but, like most people, he was deathly afraid of getting sued and had been greatly relieved when I’d told him it was handled and the suit had been dismissed. I figured it was worth meeting him in person, so I offered to buy him lunch if he’d meet me on Saturday. He accepted, but said he’d be up in Tahoe this weekend. We agreed to meet the following Saturday and he suggested a spot to meet in San Mateo County.

I was running out of ideas so I looked back over my notes. I had never followed up on the MythBusters filming, so I decided to see what I could dredge up there. I found the contact info for Michael, the one I’d talked to last, and called him. When he answered I reminded him that I’d spoken to him about preserving the film from the day of the shooting and asked him to prepare a copy for me to pick up. He was hesitant and explained that after I had talked to him he’d run my request by the company’s lawyer who said they couldn’t provide anything without a subpoena. I asked if they’d preserved the film and video and he confirmed that they had.

This led to another call to Breen. When I told him I wanted a trial subpoena issued to MythBusters, he asked me what I expected to find. I told him probably nothing. Even if they had been filming the right direction, the target shed and line of trees in the parking lot blocked any view of the barracks or classroom area. He was reluctant to issue the subpoena since it would probably require a hefty fee for the copying, not to mention my time or Maeva’s to review it. I pointed out that I didn’t have much else going and that it would probably all be digital and thus pretty cheap to obtain. It would also probably be massive quantities that the prosecution would have to assign someone to review, since they’d be notified of the request when the subpoena was issued. That might give him some leverage in plea bargaining. In the end, he agreed to it for that reason alone. I asked if Woody had considered the plea deal and he told me he was still refusing to consider it, but Bert was still hopeful he could talk him into it. He told me over ninety percent of criminal cases ended in plea deals and in the end defendants nearly all agree because it’s the best outcome, even as they profess their innocence.

By the time I finished that call Maeva said she had something for me. She sent me a link then walked into my office to look at my screen over my shoulder. The website was for a breeding kennel in Oakland. It didn’t have Leung’s name on the website, but it was her address. Sure enough, Leung bred pit bulls, or at least the website said she did. There were pictures and pedigrees of over a dozen dogs. The pups, called “bullies,” were cute as could be, but that belied their preordained future as vicious watchdogs. All the pictures of adult dogs showed them in the most fierce light possible. One was ripping into the padded arm of a trainer. Another was posed growling next to a sign that said Beware of Dog. The featured dogs had names like Hitman, Shockwave, and Slasher. These weren’t your cuddly pets; they were bred and trained to be killers. I had no difficulty believing it, either, considering what I had experienced there. Pictures of recent adult dog sales showed prices in the low thousands range.

Maeva showed me an overhead picture on Google Earth of the residence. I hadn’t realized how deep the lot was. The large backyard held another structure, which I now realized must be the kennel. It was easily twice the size of a regular garage and had an adjacent fenced area that could be a dog run. As distasteful as I found the site, I realized that Ms. Leung might have suffered a significant financial loss. I told Maeva to keep digging.

Checking my traps again I found that Bobu had replied to Huntress’s personal email. Her question had been about what was wrong about the modified version of the scenario. His reply was cryptic, but intriguing: “The more complications you introduce into it, the more things there are to go wrong. Just stick to the standard scenario.”

I wanted to reply immediately, but I didn’t think it would be credible if I did. Huntress was supposed to be a busy professional and couldn’t be hanging out at her computer waiting for his reply. He could get suspicious. I decided instead to call Clarence DeWitt, the firearms unit chief back at Quantico. Now that I knew there was such a thing as a modified Two Fugitive Extraction Scenario, I had reason to question him further.

I called and left a message. He didn’t call back after an hour, so I called again and left another message saying it was urgent. Still no call by three thirty, so I called my old classmate Billy Clubb, the previous unit chief, and asked him if he had DeWitt’s home phone number. He was reluctant to give it, but when I insisted I had to reach him today and that DeWitt had already left Quantico for the day, he gave it to me.

DeWitt answered the phone himself when I called. I reminded him who I was and apologized for calling him at home. He seemed mildly irritated, but didn’t hang up. He immediately asked me if I had determined “what went wrong,” the same phrase I had used when I last talked to him. He was still intensely curious, I could tell, but equally reluctant to get drawn into the murder case.

“I’m getting closer,” I replied. “I’m pretty sure it had to do with the Modified Two-Fugitive Extraction Scenario.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, can you tell me which version of the scenario Bobu and Mossberg went through when they were out there?”

DeWitt had told me before he was too busy to research it, but I suspected the first thing he had done after we hung up last time was to look up his notes or other paperwork on the class. He hesitated before answering, then replied, “Well, I did get a chance to check that out, and it says we ran the MTFES on the second day in that class.”

“MTFES stands for Modified Two-Fugitive Extraction Scenario, I take it.”

“Right. But we modify that several different ways. If depends on how many are in the class, how much time we have, which instructors are there from my unit, which site is available, and so on. I can’t tell you exactly how it was modified.”

“What are some of the ways it is modified?”

“I thought you already knew that. How do you know that you’ve found what went wrong?”

He had me there, but I bluffed my way through it. “Clarence, look, I’m constrained here by attorney-client privilege. I’d tell you the whole story, but I really can’t. If you tell me just what scenario Bobu learned, it can help bring this thing to a close.”

“I’m telling you, I can’t because I don’t know. If you were out here, I’d walk you through all the variations. I can’t describe them all over the phone. Sometimes we have four agents outside, sometimes three. Sometimes we have a barricade outside for protection, sometimes we don’t. One of the buildings we use is smaller than the other two and configured differently. I’m sure all three are laid out differently from what you have out there in San Francisco.”

“Seriously, you’d do that, walk me through?” I asked.

There was a pause on the other end. He obviously had not thought I would take him up on that offer, but didn’t think he could back away from it. “Uh, yeah, if you were here. Why? You planning to come out?”

“I can be there the day after tomorrow. Will that work?”

I could hear the sigh on the other end. He didn’t want this, but felt pinned down. “I suppose. The range will be in use in the morning and afternoon, but there should be an hour and a half around lunchtime when I can take you out to Hogan’s Alley.”

“I’ll be there by ten A.M.”

“Okay. Report at the front reception desk and I’ll have a visitor’s badge waiting for you.”

When the call was over I sat there wondering what I had done. Short lead-time travel was expensive. I was too big to take coach and would have to spring for business class. What did I think this trip was going to show, anyway? Well, I had made the leap for better or worse. I looked up air fares online and choked. It was going to cost over two grand. There went the check Bert said he’d put in the mail for me, and I was already at least three grand in the hole. And that didn’t even count the hotel room I’d need.

I expected Ellen to blow her stack when I got home and told her I had to fly back to Washington tomorrow, but she took it in stride. Ever since Tommy started sleeping through the night she was a different person, which is to say she was the same person she used to be before Tommy. Maybe her mood was just because she’d been to the doctor that morning and learned that she had lost ten pounds since the last checkup. I didn’t tell her I was flying on Woody’s case, so she probably thought it would just be another business trip that would be covered by my client.

Anagrams of the News

Another winner published in The Anagram Times:

Trump drops twelve percentage points = Crippled POTUS attempt grew on nerves

 

GUT SHOT – Episode 31

Gut Shot – Episode 31

© Russell Atkinson 2015

He’d said he’d call tomorrow, and he was true to his word. He called me the next morning. True to his word, he had handled it.

“Good news. Your professional liability carrier will provide you your defense,” he said smugly. I could hear the “I told you so” in his voice.

“Great. So how’d you do it?”

“Simple. I sent you a check. I contacted the insurance company’s legal counsel and told them I was the attorney who hired you and that I assigned you to investigate the case. You invoiced me and I paid your invoice. It was hourly billing and included the specific hours when the dog attack occurred. You were on business for me. I offered to send them copies of the fee agreement and invoices, and threatened to sue them if they didn’t cover you.”

“You sent me a check? I hope that wasn’t a bluff.”

“It’s in the mail. Only a thousand, but I had to cover those two hours. So you’re gonna help Woody out now, right?”

“I said I’d think about it.”

“Think, schmink. What’s to think about? You owe me, big guy.”

“Actually, you owe me. But I’ll put in an hour or two later today, check the trap lines, see if anything comes up. Have you gotten any more since we spoke yesterday?”

“More forensics. The fingerprint matching turned up many more hits on the car and SWAT bag.”

“Dawson’s?”

“Yes, inside on the passenger side. Not on the trunk or the bag or the trunk release. He must have ridden in that car at least once. I got medical, too.”

“What’d that show?”

“What you’d expect. The bullet was fired in a contact shot to the right abdomen, piercing the large intestine and liver, then an artery. Logan bled to death. The bullet was recovered and matches Woody’s personally-owned revolver.”

“Anyone else’s prints on the gun? Or the shells in the gun?”

“No, just Woody’s, and it hadn’t been wiped down anywhere, either. I hired an expert and he said that Woody was the last one to handle that gun, and in fact the only one to have handled it after it was last cleaned and wiped down. He said even if someone had handled it with gloves, there would have been smeared prints.”

“So nobody else could have planted that gun there.”

“Right, according to my expert.”

“So what now?” I was hoping he could give me something to work on, even though I’d only promised him a couple of hours.

“You’re the investigator. Bring me something.”

“So it’s on me, now, is it?” I scoffed.

“You’re the man. The anchor.”

We both laughed. “I’ll get back to you when I’ve broken the case wide open,” I said sardonically.

“Please do.”

Ten minutes after this conversation I got an email from my insurance carrier telling me they agreed to defend me in the Leung case and would be sending me a letter to that effect. Things were looking up.

I decided to check the Facebook and other accounts of the agents who were on the scene. Nothing. I checked the firearms forum again, the thread I’d started about the arrest scenario, to see if “Bubo” had posted anything. There were two more posts there from others, but nothing from him. Interestingly, though, one of the other posts was from a police chief in Ohio who recommended the Two Fugitive Extraction Scenario which he’d learned when he was at the FBI’s National Academy.

The FBINA, sometimes just called NA, is a school for law enforcement professionals run at Quantico, using the same classrooms and facilities that the FBI agents use, including the firearms ranges and Hogan’s Alley, the fake town. It’s designed primarily for top-level officers who are, or soon will be, managers. It’s considered a career must for those who seek big city police chief posts. Many foreign police officials attend, too.

I used the private message feature on the forum to contact him and asked if he had a written copy of the scenario and its procedures, or a link to one. I also asked him when he had been through that training. I was hoping he would tell me he had been there at the same time as Bobu and Mossberg, but I knew it was a long shot. Before signing off I decided to try direct contact with “Bubo” again. Now that someone else had mentioned that scenario, I thought I had a good excuse to contact him for his opinion, and it wouldn’t look suspicious. I messaged him, pointed out the post by the Ohio chief, and asked if he knew that scenario and recommended it. I reminded him who I was – the instructor in Canada who had asked about barricades – and thanked him again for his previous advice.

Short on ideas, I decided to talk to some of the people who came on the scene later, the Evidence Recovery Team. I didn’t think any of them had any information that wasn’t in their reports, so it was a long shot. Not everyone on the ERT was an agent. Support people also served on that team. I began by calling the FBI main number and asking for them by name. I knew a few of them from my service there and started with them. I left messages for two of them and connected with a third, a woman who’d been on a squad with me years earlier. She was happy to talk to me but didn’t have any useful information. Her job had been to log the times and keep track of who came and went. I’d already seen her log sheet and didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary in it. She didn’t see anything suspicious or significant. There hadn’t been much evidence recovered, so the search was quick. She confirmed that Woody’s car was fully locked when the ERT arrived. She never saw anyone opening it or touching it until the team officially searched it, which was videoed.

I called two of the team members I didn’t know. I had their names from the discovery documents. I didn’t get through to either one of them. The only other employee on the site that I knew of was Rory Zimmer, the garage mechanic who had brought out the spare keys to Woody’s car. I knew him pretty well since I’d often had to deal with him as a Legal Advisor whenever a Bureau car was in an auto accident as well as when my own Bureau car needed service. I managed to get through to him but he had to leave. He was in a car pool. He said he’d be glad to talk to me, though, just not today. I said I’d call him tomorrow and we hung up.

Love, Laughter, and Murder Ever After by Jeanine Spooner

Love, Laughter, and Murder Ever After by Jeanine Spooner

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This terminally cute cozy mystery is not to be confused with an actual mystery. The crime and its solution are preposterous, but the author is not concerned with that. It’s all about Kitty, a wedding planner, and her love life. The cover picture pretty much conveys the idea. She’s holding a poisoned piece of cake, by the way. It’s a quick, inoffensive read. I was in enough of a forgiving mood that I managed to enjoy it for what it was.

View all my reviews

GUT SHOT – Episode 30

Gut Shot – Episode 30

© Russell Atkinson 2015

Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care. William Shakespeare

Chapter 16

Over the weekend our world changed. Tommy’s tooth broke through and he started sleeping through the night. Most nights, anyway. And when he did wake up, it was only once. That meant Ellen and I could get enough sleep. Sleep! Finally! Ellen became her old self in a matter of two days.

We spent the weekend doing all the things we’d planned to do with our baby. Long walks in the park. Going to the playground and letting him see other babies. Sometimes Ellen would carry him on her chest in the Snugli. Sometimes I would. Sometimes we’d put him in the stroller. I tickled him. He laughed like crazy when I did that. I don’t think I’d understood how much joy could come from parenthood until I heard him laugh.

So I was in a good mood Monday morning when I arrived at the office early. Maeva wasn’t even in yet. I put the coffee on and started to work on the new case, a due diligence investigation on the background of a new corporate Chief Financial Officer. Maeva arrived twenty minutes later and was surprised to see me in.

“Oh, you’re here,” she said. “Did you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Braswell’s been fired by the FBI. It was on the radio.”

I shook my head. “Poor Woody. I’m not surprised. Even if he beats the rap, his life has changed unalterably for the worse.”

“‘Beats the rap.’ You think he’s guilty then?”

“I don’t want to, but yes, I do. He’s lied to Bert and me from day one. There’s no other logical explanation.”

Maeva clucked her tongue in disappointment. She’d no doubt wanted to be helping free an innocent man. She took off her jacket, then pulled out her own cup and poured coffee for both of us. I gave her an assignment on the new case and asked her to forward to me all her work on the backlogged cases.

The phone rang several times. Once I saw from the caller ID that it was Bert, I called out to Maeva not to put him through. She told him I was out. His only message was to call him. I had just gotten started on the caseload when I got a call from the insurance claims agent. He asked me some questions about the incident that had not been covered in my summary. He took down the names of the punks I had identified at OPD. After fifteen minutes of questions I told him I had to get back to work and to please hurry it up. At that he told me that the company had decided I was not in the scope of my business as an attorney or private investigator at the time of the “event.” I was just taking a walk, so I wasn’t covered by my professional liability policy. He recommended I submit the claim to my personal insurance carrier.

This ticked me off, but I knew there wasn’t any point in arguing with him, at least not right then. I hung up and called my homeowner’s insurance agent. I had a nice big million dollar personal umbrella policy, so I wasn’t worried. I didn’t care which insurance carrier settled the claim. It took another half hour to get through and tell the story again, this time adding that my professional carrier had denied coverage on the ground it wasn’t part of my business. Once again I was directed to fill in an online web form. Another twenty minutes went down the drain.

By the end of the day I was fully back on track. Thanks to some crackerjack work by Maeva the previous week, I was able to complete one investigation that had been dragging on too long. I knew my client, the acquiring company, would be happy with my findings, too. I had to stay late, but I finished the report and submitted it before I went home for the day.

Tuesday morning went by equally fast. Around noon I went to the gym to lift weights, my first good workout in days. I hadn’t gone running in over a week. I knew I needed the aerobic, too, and vowed to get out for a run the next day. I promised myself I’d take Ellen geocaching over the weekend, too. A nice long hike would do us both good.

Bert called several more times that afternoon and I kept dodging him. He emailed, too, of course. I opened the email, and as expected, it just said that Woody needed me and to give him a call. I knew he’d try to suck me back into the case if I talked to him.

Just before quitting time, the kicker arrived in my inbox. My personal insurance carrier denied coverage on the grounds that it occurred during the course of my business and therefore should have been submitted to my professional carrier. I blew my stack and let out a blue streak such as Maeva had never heard from me. I apologized and she just laughed and told me she’d heard worse than that in PG-13 films.

Okay, so I’d return Bert’s calls and pick his brain. He’d know what to do. I still had his number on speed dial. I hit the button and got to his secretary. She put me through right away.

“Cliff, thanks for returning my calls. I know you want out of the case but I’m desperate here. I …”

“Save it, Bert. I’m not coming back in. I gave you the courtesy of a call back to see if there were any new developments and advise you if there were, but that’s all.”

“There are. Woody’s been fired.”

“I heard. That’s got to be rough, I know, but it doesn’t change anything on the case. I meant any new evidence.”

“Not without an investigator. That’s what I need you for.”

“Let me ask you a question. I submitted the insurance claim on the Leung suit to my professional carrier and my personal carrier. And they …”

“To both? Let me guess. They each denied coverage saying you should submit it to the other one.”

“How’d you guess?”

“Happens all the time. They want you to pay premiums your entire life and never make a claim. Pure income, no expenses.”

“So how do I handle it? Do I have to sue them? Complain to the Department of Insurance?”

I heard Bert chuckle. “If I handle it for you will you come back to help Woody?”

“I’m sure you’re a good trial lawyer, but I need an insurance company to pay the claim or the judgment if it goes to trial.”

“I didn’t mean I’d represent you on the case. I meant I could get the insurance company to defend you.”

“How?”

“Trust me. No charge. Goodness of my heart and all that shit. I got the criminal case dropped.”

“Fine, do your magic. I’ll consider helping some more on Woody’s case, but that’s all I’ll promise.”

“It’s a deal. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? What’re you going to do? Hold a gun to the head of the insurance company?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

We ended the call and I went home still mentally muttering epithets to myself. I decided not to tell Ellen. There was no point in worrying her.

IBM’s mail scanner panel – a scam

A few months ago I was recruited to help the U.S. Post Office become more efficient by participating in a mail scanner panel run by IBM under contract to the USPS. They sent me a handheld scanner that reads Intelligent Mail Barcodes. The reporting website is reportez.com. I was promised to get reward points issued by IBM to be redeemed at reportezrewards.com. I dutifully brought in the mail and scanned every piece every day for over two months. It was more tedious and time-consuming than I expected. They inisist that you not miss a day or report mail a day late, so no vacations or getting sick except on Sunday.

The promised points never appeared in my reportezrewards account. I wasn’t expecting much, but I was expecting something. It was never made clear what value the points had. I wanted to see what I would receive for my work in order to decide whether it was worth the hassle, but until the points appeared in my account I couldn’t know. I got peeved and complained to IBM who told me to complain to reportezrewards,com, which is actually run by a company called corporaterewards.com. I called and emailed them. They replied that it wasn’t their fault, it was IBM’s and to call IBM. After several frustrating go arounds, IBM finally acknowledged that my points were not accumulating like they should. They had no explanation why; it seems that no one at IBM knows much about computers. Rather than just put the points in my account, they said they would have to start me all over with a new reporter ID and new rewards account and they’d put the points in there. They told me I would get a new ID via email but I could continue to use the scanner I had. So of course after telling me I would not get a new scanner, they sent me a new scanner which I then had to take to a UPS station to mail back to them. Any you thought the post office was inefficient? I registered at reportezrewards once again with the new ID and finally got those points. Thirteen points, to be exact, for what was by this time three months work.

So finally I could find out how much I was making. I went to the “spend rewards” page and found that my points were worth – $13. For three months work. I’ve heard of minimum wage but this is a new low. Not only that, they won’t send you cash. You have to spend it at approved vendors like Macy’s or Verizon. I ask you, what can you buy at Macy’s or Verizon for $13? Well, the only vendor I found that might have something costing as little as $13 was a music site so decided to get a CD. I found the CD I wanted there and tried to buy it, but I got a message that they were out of stock and sent me over to Amazon to buy it. Of course, Amazon does not accept reward points. So then I looked through what they claimed they did have on the approved vendor site and found an mp3 song that seemed fun. It was only 99 cents. Okay, so I go to buy it and it wants a credit card. I keep looking for an icon or link to use the reward points, but there is none. The reportezrewards logo is right on the product page, but nowhere to be seen on the payment page. i go back to the rewards page and read through the detailed instructions. They said to click on the reward points icon that appears right next to the credit card images. Only there is no such icon next to those credit card images. I give up and email reportezrewards.com for help. I wait two days and get a reply to call them for help. Gee thanks. That’s very helpful. So I call the listed phone number. It goes to a phone tree. The very first choice is to press one if you are having trouble spending your reward points. That tells you something. I pressed one. It rings forever then puts you on voice mail. I asked someone to call me back. No one does that day so I do the same thing the next day, calling early to avoid the crowded midday, but get voice mail again. Same thing that day. I try one more time. One email and three calls and I got zero help and nothing for my three months of work.

The light bulb finally went off. The whole thing was a scam and I fell for it. The truth is it’s like one of those carnival games. you think you can win something, but of course you can’t. The game is rigged. If you are recruited for it, don’t fall for it. I got zilch and you will, too.

The Blackmail Club -a new meaning for breastworks

The Blackmail Club by David Bishop

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This is the first Jack McCall Mystery. Jack is retired CIA and now a private eye in Washington, D.C. with his partner Nora, an ex-cop. I got this on a free download and it was worth every penny. Do the math. The plot was preposterous, the characters one-dimensional (is it possible to have zero dimensions?), and the writing hackneyed. Bishop goes in for some character development though. Take Nora, for example. Here are some examples of his development of Nora:
“She reached inside her blouse to reposition a bra strap …”
“…crossed her arms, pushing her black bra and its mounded contents into sight…”
“…leaned in, her breasts and white bra showing…”
“… and more active breasts than Lauren Bacall…”
“…and crossed her arms, elevating her cleavage…”
Nora is quite developed, it seems, and likes to cross her arms a lot. She also owns many different bras. I’ve heard of breastworks but I thought that term referred only to military fortifications. It appears that it can also refer to bad novels. I’ve been known to dump on female mystery writers who spend half the book describing their heroine’s outfits. Bishop does the same thing with the undergarments … and their mounded contents. As a retired FBI agent, I can attest that Bishop knows zero about blackmail or law enforcement.

View all my reviews