the veil that keeps me blind, 9/15
Title: The Veil That Keeps Me Blind
Chapter: 9/15 (Book III)
Notes: Continuing on with Book III.
Book III
Chapter 9
xxxxx
It took nearly another three weeks of preparation before she entered the shelter as Teresa Miller, the badly beaten wife of Aaron Miller, and even longer before she could gather any useful information. She had to tread carefully.
The shelter itself was a former three-story apartment building, generously converted as part of an old woman’s dying wish. Because of its close proximity to some of the wealthier San Francisco suburbs, it often provided refuge for many abused women from the upper middle class. It had been open for just shy of ten years, and although it could accommodate up to 20 women at capacity, there were currently eleven residents (now twelve, Lisbon would remind herself); along with a lively African American woman in her late 40s named Leah who was both a nurse and the live-in director, four full-time staff volunteers, and at least fifteen part-time volunteers. Knowing that the likelihood of there being someone on the inside at the shelter, Lisbon had to take each one of the volunteers into consideration. Although she did due diligence and considered the residents and Leah as well, Lisbon followed her instincts and did not press the matter.
Frequently, she would find herself wondering what Jane would do, or what he would see in the different people she met. Whether or not he would consider each person a suspect, and why. At times, that could be more distracting than constructive.
The days passed slowly. For a person so used to her own routine, the very nature of an undercover assignment left her completely drained on a daily basis. Her only real respite was the part-time job at a restaurant that had been set up for her ahead of time; from there she would be able to make contact with Agent Casper, who was second in command on the task force as well as her handler.
In spite of the information she was gathering on the volunteers and women at the shelter, the real break in the case did not come until a fifth woman disappeared, about three months into Lisbon’s assignment.
It was not unusual for a woman to leave the shelter without much warning, but the minute Lisbon realized that Jenny was missing, alarm bells sounded internally. Jenny was young, in her late 20s, and she had been making arrangements to go live with a cousin in Chicago. Nothing about her situation made Lisbon believe that she would disappear without saying a word, nor did she seem like the type to go back to her ex-fiancé, who had put her in the hospital on at least three separate occasions.
Lisbon alerted Agent Casper of her suspicions as soon as possible, but it was already too late. Jenny’s body turned up ten days later.
Lisbon felt the loss acutely. She was there not only to find the culprit, but also to protect these women. She had failed. She promised herself it would not happen a second time.
In the time immediately following Jenny’s disappearance and death, Lisbon found several new avenues of investigation to pursue, and for the first time, the possibility of catching the guilty party -- or parties -- felt real. At this point, Lisbon first became suspicious of Debbie Summers.
Summers had been a volunteer at the shelter for just under three years, but she did not have any close relationships with any of the other long-term volunteers. Because she worked in the office, she would have easy access to all of the women’s files, and thus, all of their personal information. But this was just part of a theory, not nearly enough to raise suspicion on its own.
What really made Lisbon suspicious was Summers’ reaction (or lack thereof) to Jenny’s disappearance. Lisbon happened to be on her way past the main office when Leah mentioned the fact that Jenny had left the shelter without any warning or explanation. From Lisbon’s vantage point, she could see clearly as the rest of the volunteers expressed their concern and fear. Summers’ reaction was unlike any of the others in that, while she may have mirrored exactly what they said, her face did not show any distress.
It was almost Jane-like, Lisbon would later muse, the way she decided to dig deeper into Debbie Summers on something as subjective as her facial expression.
But Lisbon needed more than suspicion; she needed proof. Debbie Summers was just the link on the inside, one piece of the puzzle, and Lisbon had to figure out how to trace Summers to everyone who was involved. The task would have been daunting enough had Lisbon been working at full capacity, with the resources of the CBI at her fingertips and her team (and Jane) working alongside her.
Instead, Lisbon was alone in an unfamiliar place, without the security of her badge or her team, or even her own identity. She had Agent Casper, upon whom she knew she could rely, and Agent Zeidman, whose familiar face always brought Lisbon some comfort even when they could not speak. But for the majority of her time, she was on her own.
Lisbon finally discovered the link between each victim during a late night trip to the main office, during which she managed to utilize several of Jane’s lock-breaking techniques (he spent one rainy afternoon teaching her and she’d picked it up quickly; not long afterwards -- and much to his amusement -- she showed him how to hot-wire a car). Although the victims had absolutely nothing in common at first glance -- physical type, acquaintances, even geographic proximity -- there was one common link between them. Their significant others all either knew or did business with the real estate developer Clifford Mehler.
She knew that name well. She remembered his first wife, a scared young woman named Irene, whom Lisbon had met in her precinct at the SFPD some fifteen years ago. Lisbon herself had been a rookie, fresh out of the academy, and Irene had not been much older than she was. They had only met briefly, Lisbon brought Irene coffee while she waited to give a statement, but the woman had made an impression.
Irene’s left arm was in a cast, splotches of blue and purple visible all over her skin that no amount of layering or makeup would disguise. It was the first time Lisbon had seen a victim of domestic abuse since she joined the force.
That night, when Bosco and the others went out for drinks to celebrate closing another one of their active cases, she declined the invitation, instead stopping at a liquor store on her way home to buy a bottle of tequila just so she could dump it down her kitchen sink.
That will never be me again, she had vowed silently, not for the first time.
Even years later, Lisbon could still remember how angry she felt when the charges against Clifford were dropped. It had been Bosco who noticed how upset she had been; he had helped her channel that, prevented her from drowning in it.
Lisbon had not thought about Clifford or Irene Mehler in years, but the second she saw that the first victim, Katie Nicholas, was the wife of Richard Nicholas, the Vice President of Marketing for Mehler Properties, Inc., Lisbon knew instinctively where the investigation was headed. Each of the other victims must be linked in some way to Mehler or one of Mehler’s associates.
The very idea of it left her reeling. Five women in under two years, and all of them associated with Mehler. It wasn’t the most shocking discovery, as Lisbon suspected other men who spend a significant amount of time with Mehler were more likely to be prone to violence themselves. And Mehler, both brilliant and opportunistic, had more business contacts now than ever before, as he had taken advantage of the dip in the real estate market to invest and expand as soon as prices bottomed out.
There were still plenty of questions to be answered, but at least this gave her direction, her first real, solid lead.
The problem was that from the inside, there was little Lisbon could do outside of what she was already doing. All she could do was bring the information to Casper at their next meeting.
Once Casper had the information, he brought it back to the rest of the task force. They easily confirmed Lisbon’s theory that each victim’s husband or significant other knew Mehler in some capacity, but no one could trace the link between Mehler and Debbie Summers. There was still no concrete evidence linking either of them to the crimes, and the FBI could not make an arrest on circumstantial evidence and theories. If they did, Mehler and Summers would walk and more women would die.
Finally, after nearly two months of inconclusive searching and dead ends, Lisbon caught a break. Summers came in early that evening, appearing distracted and upset, and Lisbon watched her closely. While everyone else went down to the backyard for a cookout (as the holidays approached, the volunteers tried to provide some festive programs, making the best of a difficult situation for all involved), Lisbon hung back and tried to stick close to Summers.
Lisbon managed to overhear threads of Summers’ cell phone conversation with a man she called Jim. From what Lisbon could hear, they seemed to be discussing back records at the clinic, women who had already passed through and moved on. There was a large filing room in the basement that housed those records, but the part-time volunteers did not have access to it. As far as Lisbon knew, only Leah had access to that particular filing room; it was the only way to ensure each residents’ continued privacy and protection.
Unarmed and unable to follow Summers to the basement without risking detection, Lisbon was forced to wait while Summers broke into the file room and copied whatever documents she was after. Three hours later while everyone else was still outside, Summers left with two bags full of information copied from the room.
Lisbon had to act fast. Without any knowledge of whether or not Summers had any incriminating information on her, Lisbon knew she couldn’t let this opportunity pass her by. She made a split-second decision to follow Summers, knowing that she would not be able to contact Casper or Zeidman to let them know what her plans were. She quickly picked the lock to the top drawer of Leah’s desk in the main office, grabbing the keys for the spare car that the shelter has available for residents’ use, and raced out to follow Summers.
Trailing Summers at a safe distance in order to avoid detection, Lisbon wound through streets in an unfamiliar San Francisco suburb, every minute moving farther and farther away from the city itself. Summers, obviously not the criminal mastermind behind this operation given that she did not take any measures to prevent being easily followed, drove for almost an hour before arriving at her destination, an old manor house at the end of a private driveway.
Lisbon parked the car off the side of the road, several back roads away from the entrance to the driveway, and she made her way back in the darkness, with only the crescent moon as guide.
She should have been tired, but between adrenaline and anticipation, she barely noticed. Mindful of the fact that she could not gather evidence without it getting thrown out in court (and that she was unarmed), she surveyed the property as best she could at almost midnight. The temperature had dropped significantly since she had last been outside that afternoon, and she was grateful she had the forethought at least to grab her coat before rushing out the door in pursuit of Summers.
The name on the mailbox read Stroup, J. and Lisbon wondered if the house belonged to Jim, the man Summers had been speaking to on the phone earlier. It took Lisbon nearly ten minutes to walk the length of the driveway in the dark, the house well-secluded amongst tall trees and far away from any prying eyes.
Her initial inspection of the property revealed nothing out of the ordinary, and finally, exhaustion set in. She returned to the safety of the car, tucked away out of the view of any passing cars, and armed with the knowledge that now that she had made it this far there was no going back, she allowed herself to fall into a restless slumber.
xxxxx
Chapter: 9/15 (Book III)
Notes: Continuing on with Book III.
Book III
Chapter 9
xxxxx
It took nearly another three weeks of preparation before she entered the shelter as Teresa Miller, the badly beaten wife of Aaron Miller, and even longer before she could gather any useful information. She had to tread carefully.
The shelter itself was a former three-story apartment building, generously converted as part of an old woman’s dying wish. Because of its close proximity to some of the wealthier San Francisco suburbs, it often provided refuge for many abused women from the upper middle class. It had been open for just shy of ten years, and although it could accommodate up to 20 women at capacity, there were currently eleven residents (now twelve, Lisbon would remind herself); along with a lively African American woman in her late 40s named Leah who was both a nurse and the live-in director, four full-time staff volunteers, and at least fifteen part-time volunteers. Knowing that the likelihood of there being someone on the inside at the shelter, Lisbon had to take each one of the volunteers into consideration. Although she did due diligence and considered the residents and Leah as well, Lisbon followed her instincts and did not press the matter.
Frequently, she would find herself wondering what Jane would do, or what he would see in the different people she met. Whether or not he would consider each person a suspect, and why. At times, that could be more distracting than constructive.
The days passed slowly. For a person so used to her own routine, the very nature of an undercover assignment left her completely drained on a daily basis. Her only real respite was the part-time job at a restaurant that had been set up for her ahead of time; from there she would be able to make contact with Agent Casper, who was second in command on the task force as well as her handler.
In spite of the information she was gathering on the volunteers and women at the shelter, the real break in the case did not come until a fifth woman disappeared, about three months into Lisbon’s assignment.
It was not unusual for a woman to leave the shelter without much warning, but the minute Lisbon realized that Jenny was missing, alarm bells sounded internally. Jenny was young, in her late 20s, and she had been making arrangements to go live with a cousin in Chicago. Nothing about her situation made Lisbon believe that she would disappear without saying a word, nor did she seem like the type to go back to her ex-fiancé, who had put her in the hospital on at least three separate occasions.
Lisbon alerted Agent Casper of her suspicions as soon as possible, but it was already too late. Jenny’s body turned up ten days later.
Lisbon felt the loss acutely. She was there not only to find the culprit, but also to protect these women. She had failed. She promised herself it would not happen a second time.
In the time immediately following Jenny’s disappearance and death, Lisbon found several new avenues of investigation to pursue, and for the first time, the possibility of catching the guilty party -- or parties -- felt real. At this point, Lisbon first became suspicious of Debbie Summers.
Summers had been a volunteer at the shelter for just under three years, but she did not have any close relationships with any of the other long-term volunteers. Because she worked in the office, she would have easy access to all of the women’s files, and thus, all of their personal information. But this was just part of a theory, not nearly enough to raise suspicion on its own.
What really made Lisbon suspicious was Summers’ reaction (or lack thereof) to Jenny’s disappearance. Lisbon happened to be on her way past the main office when Leah mentioned the fact that Jenny had left the shelter without any warning or explanation. From Lisbon’s vantage point, she could see clearly as the rest of the volunteers expressed their concern and fear. Summers’ reaction was unlike any of the others in that, while she may have mirrored exactly what they said, her face did not show any distress.
It was almost Jane-like, Lisbon would later muse, the way she decided to dig deeper into Debbie Summers on something as subjective as her facial expression.
But Lisbon needed more than suspicion; she needed proof. Debbie Summers was just the link on the inside, one piece of the puzzle, and Lisbon had to figure out how to trace Summers to everyone who was involved. The task would have been daunting enough had Lisbon been working at full capacity, with the resources of the CBI at her fingertips and her team (and Jane) working alongside her.
Instead, Lisbon was alone in an unfamiliar place, without the security of her badge or her team, or even her own identity. She had Agent Casper, upon whom she knew she could rely, and Agent Zeidman, whose familiar face always brought Lisbon some comfort even when they could not speak. But for the majority of her time, she was on her own.
Lisbon finally discovered the link between each victim during a late night trip to the main office, during which she managed to utilize several of Jane’s lock-breaking techniques (he spent one rainy afternoon teaching her and she’d picked it up quickly; not long afterwards -- and much to his amusement -- she showed him how to hot-wire a car). Although the victims had absolutely nothing in common at first glance -- physical type, acquaintances, even geographic proximity -- there was one common link between them. Their significant others all either knew or did business with the real estate developer Clifford Mehler.
She knew that name well. She remembered his first wife, a scared young woman named Irene, whom Lisbon had met in her precinct at the SFPD some fifteen years ago. Lisbon herself had been a rookie, fresh out of the academy, and Irene had not been much older than she was. They had only met briefly, Lisbon brought Irene coffee while she waited to give a statement, but the woman had made an impression.
Irene’s left arm was in a cast, splotches of blue and purple visible all over her skin that no amount of layering or makeup would disguise. It was the first time Lisbon had seen a victim of domestic abuse since she joined the force.
That night, when Bosco and the others went out for drinks to celebrate closing another one of their active cases, she declined the invitation, instead stopping at a liquor store on her way home to buy a bottle of tequila just so she could dump it down her kitchen sink.
That will never be me again, she had vowed silently, not for the first time.
Even years later, Lisbon could still remember how angry she felt when the charges against Clifford were dropped. It had been Bosco who noticed how upset she had been; he had helped her channel that, prevented her from drowning in it.
Lisbon had not thought about Clifford or Irene Mehler in years, but the second she saw that the first victim, Katie Nicholas, was the wife of Richard Nicholas, the Vice President of Marketing for Mehler Properties, Inc., Lisbon knew instinctively where the investigation was headed. Each of the other victims must be linked in some way to Mehler or one of Mehler’s associates.
The very idea of it left her reeling. Five women in under two years, and all of them associated with Mehler. It wasn’t the most shocking discovery, as Lisbon suspected other men who spend a significant amount of time with Mehler were more likely to be prone to violence themselves. And Mehler, both brilliant and opportunistic, had more business contacts now than ever before, as he had taken advantage of the dip in the real estate market to invest and expand as soon as prices bottomed out.
There were still plenty of questions to be answered, but at least this gave her direction, her first real, solid lead.
The problem was that from the inside, there was little Lisbon could do outside of what she was already doing. All she could do was bring the information to Casper at their next meeting.
Once Casper had the information, he brought it back to the rest of the task force. They easily confirmed Lisbon’s theory that each victim’s husband or significant other knew Mehler in some capacity, but no one could trace the link between Mehler and Debbie Summers. There was still no concrete evidence linking either of them to the crimes, and the FBI could not make an arrest on circumstantial evidence and theories. If they did, Mehler and Summers would walk and more women would die.
Finally, after nearly two months of inconclusive searching and dead ends, Lisbon caught a break. Summers came in early that evening, appearing distracted and upset, and Lisbon watched her closely. While everyone else went down to the backyard for a cookout (as the holidays approached, the volunteers tried to provide some festive programs, making the best of a difficult situation for all involved), Lisbon hung back and tried to stick close to Summers.
Lisbon managed to overhear threads of Summers’ cell phone conversation with a man she called Jim. From what Lisbon could hear, they seemed to be discussing back records at the clinic, women who had already passed through and moved on. There was a large filing room in the basement that housed those records, but the part-time volunteers did not have access to it. As far as Lisbon knew, only Leah had access to that particular filing room; it was the only way to ensure each residents’ continued privacy and protection.
Unarmed and unable to follow Summers to the basement without risking detection, Lisbon was forced to wait while Summers broke into the file room and copied whatever documents she was after. Three hours later while everyone else was still outside, Summers left with two bags full of information copied from the room.
Lisbon had to act fast. Without any knowledge of whether or not Summers had any incriminating information on her, Lisbon knew she couldn’t let this opportunity pass her by. She made a split-second decision to follow Summers, knowing that she would not be able to contact Casper or Zeidman to let them know what her plans were. She quickly picked the lock to the top drawer of Leah’s desk in the main office, grabbing the keys for the spare car that the shelter has available for residents’ use, and raced out to follow Summers.
Trailing Summers at a safe distance in order to avoid detection, Lisbon wound through streets in an unfamiliar San Francisco suburb, every minute moving farther and farther away from the city itself. Summers, obviously not the criminal mastermind behind this operation given that she did not take any measures to prevent being easily followed, drove for almost an hour before arriving at her destination, an old manor house at the end of a private driveway.
Lisbon parked the car off the side of the road, several back roads away from the entrance to the driveway, and she made her way back in the darkness, with only the crescent moon as guide.
She should have been tired, but between adrenaline and anticipation, she barely noticed. Mindful of the fact that she could not gather evidence without it getting thrown out in court (and that she was unarmed), she surveyed the property as best she could at almost midnight. The temperature had dropped significantly since she had last been outside that afternoon, and she was grateful she had the forethought at least to grab her coat before rushing out the door in pursuit of Summers.
The name on the mailbox read Stroup, J. and Lisbon wondered if the house belonged to Jim, the man Summers had been speaking to on the phone earlier. It took Lisbon nearly ten minutes to walk the length of the driveway in the dark, the house well-secluded amongst tall trees and far away from any prying eyes.
Her initial inspection of the property revealed nothing out of the ordinary, and finally, exhaustion set in. She returned to the safety of the car, tucked away out of the view of any passing cars, and armed with the knowledge that now that she had made it this far there was no going back, she allowed herself to fall into a restless slumber.
xxxxx