HEINZ NOONAN
and
Captain Heinz Noonan, the “Bearded Holmes” of the Sandersonville Police Department, was armed with a fishing pole and wading through the swirling waters of the Little Susitna River 60 miles north of Anchorage, Alaska, when his cellular phone exploded to life.
"I hate this damn thing," he snarled as he sloshed ashore and dug into his hip waders to find the electronic bug that was vibrating annoyingly in a jean pocket. Popping the throbbing beast open he continued his snarl. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know! We're having dinner at 7 with the in-laws and you want me there early!"
"That's fine with me," came a strange voice over the cellular, "but all I need to know is where we can find a John Doe with Bubonic Plague who's been kidnapped and held for $1 million in ransom."
"Huh?"
"Captain Noonan?"
Noonan looked up and down the deserted banks of the Little Su. "Who else would it be? And where did you get my phone number? No, let me guess. My wife."
"Actually it was one of your sons, Otto. Your wife wasn't home. She was out shopping."
"What a surprise," Noonan snorted.
"Yes, Sir. I know. If I don't hurry home my husband will have bought out the May Company."
"OK, you caught me?"
"Did I catch you at a bad time?"
"I'm on vacation so any time you catch me is a bad time. But now that I've been interrupted, who are you and what can I do for you?"
"This is Lt. Annette Levi with the Riverside Police Department -- in Riverside, California. We're about 60 miles west of Los Angeles."
"OK."
"We've got a problem that our Commissioner said you might be able to solve. I wouldn't be bothering you on vacation but it could be a matter of life and death and therefore time is very short."
Noonan settled on the sand and stretched out his long legs. Pulling his hat off he let the Alaskan sun blast onto his face. "You have my full attention."
"Three days ago, Friday, we had a man claiming to be Samuel Comstock checked into the Riverside Memorial Hospital. He had injured himself while jogging so he didn't have any identification."
"You mean he didn't have it on him?"
"Yes. At first. But after he disappeared the hospital and later our department ran a check and discovered that everything he had given us was false."
"I thought you said he was kidnapped."
"I did. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me go back to the beginning. Comstock checked in with a jogging injury and gave the hospital a raft of numbers: his driver's license number, Blue Cross number, Veterans Administration number, stuff like that. They put him in a bed and ran some preliminary tests. But they couldn't run any of his insurance or veteran’s numbers because it was Friday. By Monday, when they knew the man was a phony, he'd been kidnapped and held for ransom."
"Someone kidnapped a John Doe and held him for ransom? Who were they extorting?"
"The hospital."
"The hospital? Why would they demand that the hospital pay for a patient they didn't have?"
"Because the lab report came back on the John Doe saying that he had Bubonic Plague."
"I must have missed something here. John Doe has Bubonic Plague?"
"Apparently. That's what the lab report said. The perps kidnapped John Doe and demanded that the hospital pay $1 million in cash or they would see that the Bubonic Plague was released in Riverside."
"Is that possible?"
"The hospital people say maybe, depends on if the perps know what they're doing. Bubonic Plague is usually spread by rats and fleas and while Riverside does have quite a few of both, it would be hard to start a rampaging plague. But if the perps knew what they were doing they could start a minor panic."
"But why is the hospital at risk?"
"The perps say that if the hospital doesn't pay they're going to start a plague and then let the hospital get sued as the perpetrator."
"Cute. But I don't think any court would let the hospital be sued."
"Hey, this is California, Sir. Even animals have rights here. As far as the hospital is concerned, this is nothing more than a shake down."
"Extortion."
"Yes, Sir. B-u-t we're black magic people down here. We don't know that much about Bubonic Plague and the public knows even less. So we're not taking any chances. If the hospital says there's a chance, even a 1/1000th chance of a plague being released, well, we're concerned."
"Is the hospital going to pay?" There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. "I see. So you want to know if I can figure out what's going on and give you some suggestions before the hospital feels compelled to pay."
"If you could be so kind."
"What's the deadline?"
"Three hours."
"Thanks for all the time. OK. I'll do what I can from here. Let's see. I'll need the following information. First, what else did the lab report say on John Doe, other than Bubonic Plague, I mean. Second, run the John Doe's fingerprints through the national computer and see what pops up. Maybe you'll get lucky. Third, check every name in the visitor register and compare it with your yellow pages for attorneys. Then call those attorneys to see if they have been approached by a potential client over the weekend who was in the hospital. That's a lot of calls but you might get lucky. Fourth, check the incoming patients with the actual number in the hospital to make sure your John Doe isn't faking his own kidnapping. Finally, get a list of everyone at the hospital and . . ."
"A lot of this information I have already. Let's see. We lifted quite a few prints from the hospital room but there isn't any chance we'll have a response before the deadline. The guy appeared to be pretty healthy with the exception of the Bubonic Plague. Hell, his cholesterol is lower than mine! We checked all the patients in the hospital against the incoming log and found everyone present and accounted for. We ran the name of everyone in the hospital through the crime computer and came up with just about zip."
"'Just about zip,' isn't a goose egg. What did you find?"
"Let's see. There were three serious makes. We had a woman in accounting that had an arrest but no conviction for shoplifting -- but that was a dozen years ago. One of the orderlies had a drunk and disorderly conviction, minor stuff, and three of the doctors have drug related convictions."
"What kind of drug convictions?"
"I know what you think, but none of them were for sale. All of them were picked up for something else and drug addiction turned up in the investigation. All three were sentenced to rehabilitation. Two of them went, the third's conviction is too recent to tell."
"Was the third close to the John Doe?"
"He's pediatric. Different part of the hospital."
"What else?"
"Drunk driving, burning without a permit, dog without a license, speeding, parking tickets, gambling, building without a permit, a couple of domestic violence calls and a clam poaching charge."
"Clam poaching?"
"Yeah. We thought that was funny too. Seems the guy was on the wrong beach in the wrong month. Cost him $25 but probably saved his life. Any clams you poach that time of year were probably poison."
"Yeah," said Noonan, "never eat a clam in a month with an R right."
"Could be. I'm a desert girl. We don't have a lot of clams down here."
"How about those gambling convictions."
"Two. One was a woman, 27. Caught in an after hours club. Sentence suspended. She works in administration. The second is a Candy Striper. Neighbors complained about a loud party and they found what appeared to be a strip poker game in progress so they ran everyone in. No conviction."
"How old is the candy striper?"
"17, senior in high school, B+ student."
"Let me think about
this for an hour."
"I can reach you at this number?"
Noonan looked down the banks of the Little Su again. "Where else would I be?"
DO YOU HAVE A CLUE WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?
DID HEINZ NOONAN ASK ALL THE RIGHT QUESTIONS?
WHAT WOULD YOU DO NOW?
TAKE A MOMENT TO WRITE DOWN YOUR THOUGHTS
SO YOU CAN COMPARE THEM WITH WHAT HAPPENS
NEXT!
An hour later, on the nose, Noonan's cellular phone throbbed to life again. Noonan waded ashore and settled on a log sticking out of the forest onto the drying riverbank. "Lt. Levi?"
"To coin your words, 'who else?'"
"Did you call the attorneys?"
"Yeah, how did you know that we should check with them?"
"Because I think sleazy. What did you find out?"
"Our John Doe contacted six attorneys, three of whom showed up at the hospital, one on Friday afternoon, one on Saturday morning, and the last one on Saturday afternoon."
"Let me guess. Our John Doe spun them all a different tale?"
"Right. And he borrowed $100 from each of them promising to repay them when he got out of the hospital. He said he didn't have any money with him when he got into the hospital. Can you believe it. They gave him the money!"
"Yeah, I can believe it. Have you checked the morgue at the hospital?"
"No. Why should we?"
"Because that's where your John Doe is."
"Isn't that a jump in logic? How do you know he's dead?"
"Here's how I figure it."
HOW DID YOU 'FIGURE IT?'
Noonan continued, "John Doe came into the hospital without any identification on a Friday because he needed medical attention for something severe. If it had just been a running accident they would not have kept him over night. Something was wrong with him. Really wrong. So wrong he died. When he died on Friday, someone thought this would be the perfect moment to extort money out of the hospital. John Doe was put in a morgue drawer with no paperwork and a live substitute was put in his bed. The substitute met with the attorneys and took them each for $100 apiece. That way he had three attorneys that would swear he was alive as late as Saturday afternoon."
"How about the Bubonic Plague?"
"That was all done with paperwork. The original John Doe was spirited down to the morgue -- excuse the pun -- but no paperwork was filed. Then a fake lab report was filled out. It came through regular channels and I'll bet no one questioned it because no one was in the lab over the weekend. I'll bet that if you look at that lab report carefully you'll find that it was a forgery. You said that the John Doe was healthy except for the plague, well, the perps probably took a normal lab report from the file and then slipped the Bubonic Plague line onto the report."
"But that would take a lot of preparation."
"Not really. You'd need no more than two people: one to handle the paperwork and another to take care of the body, an administrative type and an orderly."
"The woman with the gambling conviction and the orderly with the drunk and disorderly?"
"Could be. But if you want to be sure, just pass the word through Administration that you are collecting the $1 million in cash and see who rises to the bait."
"You could be right. Do you want to let me know what happens?"
"Yeah. But by mail." Noonan closed the cellular and hit the PWR button. Then he waded back into the Little Su.
OK, HOW DID YOU DO?