THE SWORD AND SICKLE

PART TWO DECEPTION:

CHAPTER-SIX

CASSINI-2, part 11

©2017, Olan L. Smith

"I can't just go and bust in her door, wellness check or not. We have such a thing as the 4th Amendment to protect; unless you are a relative or the husband, I can't perform a wellness check for you. We would need a warrant signed by a judge for a reasonable search of the property, and it would have to be for some sort of crime that has been committed on the property."

"She will not complain. I will make sure she knows the director at NASA is concerned. I'm telling you something is terribly wrong!"

"Let me call the chief detective and see what he says. Do you have the director's number? What is his name?"

Bob gave the officer the information and watched as he went back to his car. He felt nervous as officers stood around him. He looked at the nosy old woman's house and noticed her peeking out the window in the evening sunlight. He thought that this was probably the most action she had ever witnessed in the neighborhood. When the officer returned, he said, "Your director says if you are concerned, then he is concerned, and if we need to get a warrant, then he would get it." That should take about twenty minutes with his connections. In the meantime, I'll send my officers to the neighbor to investigate. I want you to tell me exactly what happened the last time you saw her." The policeman instructed his officers to interview the neighbors, then turned to Dr. Gibbon and said, "When was the last time you saw her? Tell me about her attitude and demeanor at the time."

"We were working together late last night, and when we had completed our project, she decided to go home," he fibbed.

"How did she appear to you? Was she tired? Was she upset or depressed?"

"She seemed tired, but she was excited about finishing the project and seemed excited about the news release this morning. She didn't seem depressed or upset to me." He lied again.

"And what had you all been working on?"

"We had just downloaded, anyway, the latest images from Cassini-2."

"You say she wasn't depressed. Did she appear sick?"

"No, she looked like her usual self."

"Does she have a husband, boyfriend, or girlfriend?"

"She lost her husband two years ago, and I do not know about the others. The nosy old lady over there told me she hasn't seen anybody visit her, except for when we had an informal party last week here."

One of the other officers came back from Aunty Mae's house and said, "Man, she is a wealth of information. She is one of the nosiest neighbors I've ever met."

The other officer returned, and they spoke away from Bob. He couldn't hear what they were saying. The lead officer said, "Well, it is pretty much as you have reported. The old woman mentioned something about a very bright light and those men who searched the place.

The lead officer looked at Dr. Gibbon and asked, "Bob, was Dr. Santos working on such a project?"

Bob replied, "No, despite common opinion, we don't use bright lights, and we don't abduct people in the middle of the night. I assumed the old lady was talking about the helicopter when they lit up the house."

The officer received a message on his radio. Then he said, "We have the warrant. Let's go in." He instructed two of the officers to cover the back door as he took the front. When they were in position, he checked the door to see if it was unlocked. "I always check this first. I hate to kick in the door if it is already open."

"May I go in with you?"

"Yes, after I have checked everything out."

The door was locked, so he bashed it in, using a swat-like battering ram that they pulled from the van. He signaled to the paramedics to stand down, and with his guns drawn, he walked into the house with his partners following him, and they searched the home. When he returned to the front door, he said, "Dr. Gibbons, "we found no one in the house. When you go in, please be careful and do not touch anything. We will tape it off as a crime scene until we know better. Have you called the hospitals to see if she was checked in as Jane Doe?"

"Yes, that was the first thing I did after she wouldn't answer her phone."

Does she have any relatives in the area she might be with?"

"Not to my knowledge. She is an only child, and her parents died in a car wreck many years ago."

"Can you give a description, so I can put out an all-points bulletin and check the morgue for a Jane Doe fitting her description?

"Yes, she is thirty-five, five-foot-four inches tall, has long dark-brown hair, and wears horn-rimmed glasses. She's smart, quick-witted, and as stubborn as they come. Oh boy, can she be stubborn." The officer instructed his partners to go back to the neighbors and tell them to report downtown for an official interview. He was gone for about fifteen minutes and then returned to talk with Bob. "Dr. Gibbon, we do have a Jane Doe at the morgue who meets your basic description. The body is badly burned, and officers believe she was sexually assaulted last night, and then the body was set on fire. We have no way of identifying her. She had no identification, and her hands were cut off and all her teeth were removed. Would you like to take a look to see if anything stands out, like a tattoo?"

"Yes, I would. I have worked with her closely and know she has tattoos on her upper arms."

"Were the two of you intimate?"

"Well, once or twice when she first started working for me, but not since then."

"Why did you stop seeing her?"

"I am married, officer, and I felt bad about it from the beginning. She also felt bad about it, and neither of us wanted to lose our jobs. After her husband died, she became depressed and began to work all the time. I asked her if she was okay, and she said she would work it out on her own. From her tone of voice, I knew she didn't want to renew anything between us. So, I didn't, and she seemed to recover well after about a year."

"Do you know where the morgue is?"

"Yes."

"Oh, and Dr. Gibbon's? One more thing. Are you two a part of the team that found that hunk of gold orbiting Jupiter, and if you are, do you think that has anything to do with it?"

"Yes, we are on the team that maneuvered Cassini-2 to take the images of it; no, it is not a hunk of gold," Bob replied persuasively.