The Phyllis Files Ch. 01

Cold Case Files: The Case of the Executed Environmentalist.

The chronological order of my stories is as follows:

Todd & Melina series, Interludes 1-5, Sperm Wars series, Russian Roulette series, Case of the Murdered Lovers series, Case of the Murdered Chessplayer series, The Swap series, Interludes 6-10, The Murdered Football Player Series, Case of the Black Widow series, Teresa's Christmas Story, The Case of the Black Badge series, A Case of Revenge series, Trilogy Series, Dark Side Of The Force series.

The Phyllis Files, Ch. 1

Feedback and constructive criticism is very much appreciated, and I encourage feedback for ideas.

This story contains graphic scenes, language and actions that might be extremely offensive to some people. These scenes, words and actions are used only for the literary purposes of this story. The author does not condone murder, racial language, violence, rape or violence against women, and any depictions of any of these in this story should not be construed as acceptance of the above.

Part 1 - Prologue

"I'm bored."

Such were the words Cindy Ross uttered to me in my office. I could understand why. It was in August and she was still on "light duty" as she recovered from her near-fatal wounds. Though brevetted a Lieutenant, she was not yet allowed to really take over the MCD leadership duties nor could she join her fellow detectives in their field investigations until she re-qualified with a gun. She wanted to get back into the game, and I couldn't blame her.

"Tell you what I'm going to do, my friend." I said. "I'm going to call my mother down, and you can work with her looking at some old cold case files."

"Do we get to investigate them?" Cindy asked. The fact that she did not complain a bit about going through old cases nor about working with my mother showed me just how bored and desperate she was to work. And I wanted for her to keep her skills up; perhaps a cold case would be the right prescription.

"Yes, but if anything... 'exciting'... comes up, you have to call for support." I replied. "That's why you get to work with my mom. Let me say it again: I am having her keep an eye on you so that you don't over-exert yourself while on light duty. Do I make myself clear, Lieutenant Ross?""

Cindy sighed. "Yes sir, you do."

"Good!" I said jovially. "You might ask around to see which case people around here remember and would like to see re-opened."

"I've already got one in mind: the Crown Chemicals case." Cindy replied.

"Oooh, already stirring up the political pot, are you now?" I said. "Be cautious with that one..."

Part 2 - The Details of the Case

"So tell me what you know about this case already." Phyllis said to Cindy. "And what

you've read to this point." They were in an empty Lieutenant's office, which Phyllis's son Don had suggested they use for this investigation. There were several boxes of files in the office.

"Sure." Cindy said. "This happened about eight years before Don and Melina first came to this Town. The Crown Chemicals company has a large plant on the other side of the River, technically in the Industrial District, and just south of BigPharmaCorp, which is even larger. It's still there, making basic chemicals as well as some specialty compounds.

"Crown Chemicals and BigPharmaCorp both were accused by an environmentalist extremist group, known as 'The Proactive Citizens of GreenWorld', a.k.a. 'The PCGW', of committing environmental crimes. The PCGW was staging protests against several chemical companies in the United States, but for some reason they really went after Crown Chemicals, targeting them especially hard. BigPharmaCorp is unionized while Crown is not, and that might have been a big reason.

"The PCGW first accused Crown and BigPharmaCorp of polluting the river by dumping raw chemicals and wastes directly into the river. Tests at the site and downstream showed that there were no chemicals of significance; in fact, most of the chemicals downriver were agricultural chemicals that one might expect from the farmlands that drain off into the river.

"That wasn't good enough for PCGW, and they began staging massive protests at Crown, demanding full audits, shutting down their factories, and of course the payment of money to environmentalist causes."

"A shakedown, in other words." said Phyllis.

"That is definitely one way of putting it." Cindy replied. "And Crown not only refused to pay, they put out a very strongly worded statement that said that they would never contribute to 'wacko environmentalist terrorism'. In reaction to that, the PCGW imported hundreds of people from around the country, stopping protests against other companies to bring in more people to attack Crown, and at one time there were well over 1000 protestors surrounding the fences of the plant.

"The County and Town did not have shared police forces then. The County Police and Sheriff Deputies did the best they could to get employees in and out, but every day for a week things became increasingly hostile until the County requested State Troopers and even asked the Governor to raise the National Guard to help protect the company. That created an even larger political stir in the County."

Cindy took a drink of water and continued, "The Media was there, of course, and portraying things on behalf of the PCGW protesters... and of course it's my personal opinion that the Media was trying as hard as they could to incite riots and instigate violence so they could film it.

"Well, for five days Crown refused to even talk to, much less negotiate with the protesters, and the dam finally broke. The PCGW protesters attacked the front gate and fences, breached them, and stormed the place. Crown's private security as well as the County Police found themselves under attack and, fearing for their lives, opened fire on the protesters. Some police fired tear gas, but the Crown security people didn't play around: they shot to kill, and they did kill 24 protesters and 4 Media crew members. Two County Police officers were injured fairly badly, but they ultimately recovered, and that was the closest we had to a Line-of-Duty death until Pete Feeley was killed.. Anyway, the attack faltered immediately when the gunfire began, but you can imagine the stories that were coming out from the Media about the 'unprovoked murders' of protesters."

"I certainly can." Phyllis said. "I'm beginning to remember seeing some news reports of the riots on the national news. Like you said, the Media really distorted the facts of the case in their reporting. The Media is a very dishonest bunch."

"Your son very much shares your opinion." Cindy said. "Anyway, I was in high school here when it happened. It was almost neighbor-against-neighbor in opinions around here. After the attack, the Governor brought in State Troopers and national guardsmen by the hundreds, and the environmentalists didn't try violence again. And over the next three days the State Troopers began arresting protesters in large numbers until the protests essentially were over within a week."

"If I recall," Phyllis said, "the company and the security and police were exonerated from guilt in the killings of the protesters."

"Yes, two juries brought acquittals for the company and the security people." Cindy replied, "though public opinion was against the company. However, they survived even in the face of the PCGW's relentless boycott calls. The PCGW website is even today still calling for Crown to be boycotted, but Crown weathered the initial storm and today is very active and profitable."

"So what is there for us to investigate?" Phyllis asked.

Cindy replied "A little over a week after the protests broke apart, on the weekend, a woman cut through the back fence of the company and headed towards the water treatment plant, where the water used in the processes is cleaned up before being put back into the river. This woman was shot in the back multiple times and died immediately. On her body was found several flasks of different poisons and wastes, including a highly radioactive material that probably did damage to her but she didn't live long enough to develop symptoms.

"Anyhoo, she was found dead with the chemicals. The company immediately went on a PR campaign that she was trying to sabotage the plant and harm the river water herself, while the PCGW accused the company of murdering her and planting the chemicals on her body to cover up their crime. Security cameras showed that she'd trespassed, but the SBI and local County Police couldn't quite figure out where the shots that killed the woman came from. No security personnel admitted to shooting her, and inspections of their weapons showed that none had been fired that night and that the caliber they used, 9mmP, was not the caliber of pistol bullets that killed the woman... those were .45 ACP. The FBI even came into the case and did a very thorough investigation, but could shed no new light."

"So who was blamed?" Phyllis said.

"Nobody, at least not officially." Cindy replied. "Town and County opinions were evenly, and hotly, divided over what had happened; was the woman trespassing? and had she'd been murdered?, such questions as that. But there was no evidence to arrest any individuals. After a while interest died down and all the trails the police were following went cold. The PCGW left Town and essentially have not returned.

Cindy finished her summation by adding: "One byproduct of all this, especially the riots, was that the first talk of merging the Town and County governments began in earnest, leading to that merger a few years later. So in a way, that case led to where we are today with the government structure."

"So who was this woman that was murdered?" Phyllis asked, even though she'd read the report on the victim.

"Her name was Linda Ferris. She was in her mid- to late-40s. She was short, no more than about 5'4", overweight and very chubby. Her nickname was 'the Fat Bitch'. Even her PCGW colleagues considered her to have extremely poor hygiene--"

"Which for that bunch is extraordinary." Phyllis interjected. "Sorry to interrupt, dear. Keep going."

"Please, interrupt anytime." Cindy replied. "So she had bad hygiene and wore dirty clothes. She actually told people that her clothes were in a pile on the floor and she just picked something out of the pile and put it on. She smoked heavily, probably drank, and was a real uber-feminist and environmentalist activist. She was not particularly well liked by anyone, not even her PCGW associates. She had been a public high school teacher at one time and had gotten fired."

"Ah, that's interesting." Phyllis again interjected. "Do you know how hard it is to fire a public school teacher? That's something to tuck away in our minds."

"You're right." Cindy said, making a note in her notebook. "Meanwhile, her husband, Robert Ferris, was an environmental chemist. He was about six feet tall, not overweight at all, hair frazzled and falling out, around 50 years old. He'd had his own environmental lab once, but it went bankrupt and he was still paying off debts from the closing of that when the PCGW/Crown protests began. He then went to work for other environmental labs, was considered to be pretty knowledgeable though his relations with other employees were never very good. He was not as strong nor frequent a protester as his wife, but he was at the Crown protests and was still in Town when his wife was killed."

"What were the relations between the husband and wife?" Phyllis asked.

"By all accounts, fairly good." Cindy said. "Most who knew them thought they loved each other. There were some stories of arguments between them, particularly around the time of their financial troubles, but nothing of note in later years."

"So what's your plan?" Phyllis asked, adroitly steering Cindy while allowing the younger woman to believe she was in the lead.

"Well..." Cindy replied with something resembling a sigh. "First I have to skim through all of this old paperwork, then I'll try to find and interview people who were involved at the time and still around here now. What about you?"

Phyllis replied "Oh, I think I'll... follow the money. I'll try to get financial records of the company as well as the PCGW group and see where that takes me. I'll just have to find someone to help me with these newfangled computers. Back in my day, the telephones were mounted to the wall..."

Cindy smiled. "I'll work with you on the computer, and then we can interview people together, how about that?"

"That would be just fine, dear." Phyllis said, inwardly smiling as she steered Cindy onto the right paths...

Part 3 - More Details of the Case

The next morning dawned clear and beautiful. Phyllis came into the office to find Cindy already there, poring over data.

"Cindy, dear," Phyllis said in her most grandmotherly voice, "I certainly hope you did not stay here all night."

"No ma'am." Cindy replied. "I got about four hours of sleep. But I have to admit that I'm getting into this case. I finally left at 10:00pm when Don called the Duty Desk and ordered them to throw me out, but I came back about 4:30am."

"I'm happy to hear that my son is taking care of his people." Phyllis replied. "You're supposed to be on 'light' duty, which means heavy on sleep... but I understand your excitement; I'm beginning to get very interested in this case also. So what do we have?"

"I got the financial records yesterday." Cindy said. "Sandra Speer of the FBI was very helpful, especially with PCGW's records, which are very spotty. Sandra thinks the U.S. EPA might be helping PCGW hide some of their records, but that's for another day."

Cindy continued: "Crown Chemicals is spotless in their finances. They were audited by the IRS during the time of the riots and a couple years afterwards, again upon request from the US EPA, but nothing wrong was ever found; they are accountable to the penny. PCGW's records show they received a tremendous number of contributions from many special interest groups, especially right after the riots in an effort to help them crush Crown Chemicals."

Phyllis nodded as Cindy continued: "However, I'm not finding anything of interest in the murder of Linda Ferris. No 'black box' payments from the company, and no special expenditure that would suggest hiring a killer. And for that matter, no expenditure from the PCGW over the Ferris incident."

"So what does this tell you so far, Cindy? Who had motive?" Phyllis asked.

"Oh gosh..." Cindy said, then her voice trailed off before picking up again. "It looks like PCGW financially gained from all of the protests, since they got huge donations, but they pretty much lost the battle when none of their demands were met and two dozen of their people were killed. The company held firm, but there was no real way they could be considered the 'winner' in any case."

"True." Phyllis said. "So, let's sit back a moment and get our ideas straight about who might have killed Linda Ferris."

"Don always says to never theorize without data." Cindy says. "And right now, I have no data."

"Don is an excellent detective and a careful policeman," Phyllis said, "and I am not saying he's wrong about that Conan Doyle quotation. However, I myself have a slightly different view: put our initial theories out quickly based upon this initial data, then see where things go. By getting our ideas out in the open, we can gain working hypotheses. Then we let the evidence trail prove or disprove them."

"I understand what you're saying." Cindy says. "Right now, I have years of memories that are saying the woman broke into the company grounds with the intent to frame them by dumping chemicals, was found out and shot by someone associated with the company. Perhaps not the normal security people, who were humiliated by having this woman break in on them, but by someone in the company that intercepted Ferris and shot her dead."

"And you still think that?" Phyllis asked.

"Until something more factual comes along and blows that up, I can't see any other reasonable explanation." Cindy said. "Do you have something different in mind?"

"Oh, I think your idea is very good, and the facts so far and the logic suggest it." Phyllis said. "But as my son and Agatha Christie both say, the spouse must always be looked at as a possible suspect."

"Ah, you think Robert Ferris was involved?" Cindy asked.

"Well, we must certainly consider his role in his wife's actions and death that night." Phyllis replied. "We also have to find out who Linda Ferris's associates within the PCGW were, and see if anyone had reason beyond the immediate company/group crisis to harm her."

"Now," Phyllis said, "let's play another game, one I think Don does but doesn't tell all of you about: let's imagine ourselves at the crime scene, seeing it happen, observing in our minds as we go along. Do that, and tell me what you see, my dear."

"Oh, so that's one of Don's secrets?" Cindy said. "But he has mentioned it.... hmmm..." Cindy was allowing her mind to 'see' what had happened all those years ago, as if she herself were doing it. After a few moments, she came back to the present. Phyllis was still deep in thought, and Cindy allowed her to finish, noting that her son's semi-trances were of a similar nature. Like mother, like son, Cindy thought.

Opening her eyes, Phyllis peered at Cindy. "So, dear, what did you see? And what observations did you make?"

"My first thought is to wonder how Linda Ferris breached the fence." Cindy replied. "According to these notes, she cut a hole in it and pushed back the fence. My question is how she could've done that without setting off an alarm. It was a high-tension situation, and I'd think the fences were patrolled and maybe electrified or filled with sensors."

"Excellent." Phyllis said. "What else?"

"Lessee...." Cindy said, thinking hard. "The fence at the place it was breached was some 75 yards from the building proper, so Ferris, who was badly out of shape from all reports, had to traverse that distance quickly in the dark, unerringly find the location from where she could distribute the chemicals and do so, and then find her way back without tripping any alarms or being detected. Obviously she was detected, and shot in the back.... and the notes said she was still about 30 yards from the building when she was shot."

"Very good." Phyllis said. "We can infer a lot from that, also, can't we?"

Cindy thought a moment. "I guess one observation is that Linda was doing this without the help of the PCGW."

"Oh? Why do you think that?" Phyllis asked.

"She was so out of shape. Why not send someone who could quickly and stealthily get the job done. As an analogy, if I were going to do this with police assets, I'd have Hugh Hewitt or Don execute this mission, not some fat hag or idiot like Sergeant Sharples."

"Fantastic!" Phyllis exclaimed. "You've done brilliantly."

"What did I miss?" Cindy said, sure of it from some slight inflection in Phyllis' voice.

"Oh not very much." Phyllis said adroitly. "But let's talk about your hypothesis first: there are several reasons besides Ferris acting alone to explain her being the one to go on this mission. One is that she best knew the layout of the land and where to put the chemicals. Another is that she was set up; again I bring up her husband in this mix."

"Oh... wow, yeah..." Cindy said.

"But your reasoning might be the correct one." Phyllis said. "We'll just have to see what is borne out. And you did miss one thing that I consider of extreme importance: the chemicals."

Cindy caught her breath as understanding flooded her mind, and Phyllis went on: "Yes... first of all, what exactly were those chemicals? We'll need to review those notes and get very familiar with what the chemicals were. Then we need to ask who made those chemicals, especially the radioactive ones, how they were acquired and from whom, and why they're the chosen chemicals for Ferris to use to attempt to damage Crown."