Internal Affairs
Chapter 8

Copyright© 2014 by MysteryWriter

He still had the patrol car parked outside of the insurance agent's office at night on his mind. He should bring in all the officers, of the squad on duty at the times of the complaints. He had a feeling that since it was a morals issue that would never happen.

He could get a general warning about girlfriends and sex on the job issued, but he wanted to target it a little closer. He also wanted it to come from the desk cops, if they felt the brass badge group felt it had to come out at all. Since he was on everyone's shit list, he decided that the information needed to come through Hillary at the very least.

"Hills, I got these old complaints from that box of cold files you wanted me to read. Take a look at this one please?" Roger asked.

"Okay," she said. "I thought you might want to see this. It's a report from the state police lab. It was forwarded by Deputy Sykes with a copy to the volunteer fire department." she said.

While she read the file on the mysterious patrol car, Roger read the file from the forensic lab. They identified the fire starter used in the fire at his house.

It was no shock to Roger that it had been a glass bottle filled with gasoline. Where anyone found a glass bottle by that time was hard to fathom. The burn pattern was consistent with a shattered container. They also found a piece of colored glass on the floor under the window. Probably because the suspect glass was green the lab concluded that they were not consistent with the window pane. It also had no prints.

They also determined that the liquid in the bottle was a mixture of gasoline and oil. Weed whacker, everyone in the area owns one, Roger thought. He just filed it away in his mind's file cabinet.

"Some cop is screwing an insurance agent at work," Hillary said. "Nothing criminal there. It is a breach of department policy, but do we really want to open that can of worms."

"Hillary did you learn nothing from the last two years of my life. If you want to get a cop, you start out slowly. Then you start increasing the pressure on him. It might be nothing now, but it makes him vulnerable. We don't have to do more than identify him, check him out for other things, then call him in for an interview. Get it on record that it happened, but we couldn't prove it. Then we either scare him straight, or we know who to look at later down the line" Roger suggested.

"You know for a guy with a week on this job, you understand it. I mean you really understand it," Hillary said.

"Hills, they have had a chance to regroup. It's like a cancer, you have to get it all and keep testing for it," Roger said.

"Sometimes cancer kills the patient," she said.

"That sounds a little like a threat," Roger said.

"Not at all, I think you have had plenty of those over the years. So there is nothing to take to the bosses right now. Put some names to this, then we can kick it upstairs."

Roger turned away, then turned back. "You got any thoughts on the fire bomb?"

"Two cycle engine fuel and what the hell comes in a glass bottle these days?" she asked.

"Yeah, that's what I thought too," Roger agreed. "I wonder why the cop car complaints ended."

"Damn, do you always change subjects without any warning?" Hillary asked.

"I guess so," he said.

"They lost interest, or one of them got caught. Wives are a lot smarter than cops, so I'm told," she suggested.

"So there wouldn't be a trail, since he wouldn't have stopped seeing the woman, if his wife threw him out. If he did stop seeing her, maybe his wife caught him and he gave up his piece on the side to save his pension." Hillary looked at him curiously. "The wife would get half of it, even if he wasn't eligible at the time. If she had a good lawyer anyway."

"Then again maybe it was the husband that caught his girlfriend," Hillary said.

"Either way the complaints placed the car there at or around dinner time. He was there at least twice a week for a couple of months. You know it could be still going on. Maybe he just wised up and changed were he parks the car," Roger suggested.

"I can get the gps data for all the cars. They installed those things in there last year. I bet you that it was the same time the complaints stopped," Hillary said.

"If that was the case, the cop changed his pattern, but didn't necessarily clean up his act. So let's go at it from the other end. Who is the woman?" Roger asked.

"She is someone with a key to the building," Hillary said.

"All the staff most likely have keys. They probably have nothing in there of any value," Roger suggested.

"We are overlooking another possibility. The cop got rolled up in your investigation and is doing time," Hillary suggested. "The timing is right."

"So do you want to drop it?" Roger asked curiously.

"Not till we know. There may be no satisfactory ending here for several reasons. Put it on the back burner and work it when nothing else is pushing us. That is the same with the fire bomb," Hillary said.

"So how do we get a list of the employees of the insurance company?" Roger asked.

"They all have to have licenses. It might take a while, but we can get them," Hillary said.

"Or we could walk in and flash the badge and ask real nice," Roger said.

"I knew it. That's what you wanted all along. All right let's go talk to the officer manager," Hillary agreed. "I do enjoy being played, as long as it's on the job. You do understand?"

"Yeah, I got it," Roger said.

"Detective Bridges and this is Detective Everhart," Hillary said giving the receptionist a card. "We are with the internal affairs section of the police department, and we need to see the manager."

"You really should have called first," the receptionist said.

"What's your name miss," Hillary asked.

"Sara Jones," the twenty something girl said. Roger noted that she was very attractive. He wrote her name in his notebook. That was one name down, he thought.

"Miss Jones, I think your boss might like to speak with us. It will short circuit an inquiry, which we will otherwise have to take up with the insurance commissioner's office," Hillary said.

"Wait right here," she said.

After she had left the room Hillary turned to Roger and spoke softly. "Notice all the empty desks. They seem to be paring down the work force."

"It's a recession hadn't you heard," Roger said quietly. It was a sarcastic answer and Hillary recognized it as such.

The office manager came out with the receptionist following. "Hello Herman Hartley. I'm the office manager. Also I'm the senior agent."

Hillary went through the introductions a second time. "I would like to have a list of all your agents employed over the last six months, even those who are no longer employed by Great Northern Insurance Company."

"To be honest Sara and I are the only employees here. We have a phone bank. Most of Great Northern Insurance is sold by phone, or on the internet. I'm the agent of record for all of it. Believe me it's all legal," Hartley said.

"Then give me the names of your phone operators for the last six months. Also explain to Sara that when I call back to ask for more information, it would be a very good idea for her to cooperate," Hillary said.

"I will cooperate completely," Sara said.

Hillary looked at Roger as if to say don't trust anything this woman says. "Email those names to me," Hillary said. "My email is on the card you were planning to toss in the trash."

When they were outside she said, "Something is wrong in there."

"Do you reckon?" Roger agreed.

"When we get the files, we are going to start cross matching them with the personnel on D platoon," Hillary said.

"I don't think the name of our mystery man or woman will be in the names she sends us," Roger said. "My guess is they are busy destroying files as we speak."

"Sometime you just have to give them enough rope," Hillary said.

"I have heard that bullshit before," Roger said.

"You are so pessimistic," Hillary said. "Shall we go find out where the Insurance company does business. We should probably get the bank records for either Great Northern or Mister Herman Hartley or both," Hillary said.

"Oh I like that," Roger said. "Maybe as a byproduct of our search for the love sick cop, we can clean Mister Hartley's clock," Roger suggested.

"You do know how to turn a phrase Roger dear," Hillary said. "Before we do anything else, I have to call in a favor." Hillary made the call but Roger was told to leave the office while she did it.

All the next day Roger and Hillary chased around looking for bank accounts in either Great Northern insurance or Herman Hartley's names. At the end of Tuesday they had nothing. As far as the state banking commission was concerned The Great Northern Insurance company had no complaints and were licensed as an insurance broker. It took a while for Roger to wrap his head around the difference between an Insurance Broker, an Insurance Agent, and an Insurance provider.

When you think insurance company, it can be a provider, or a broker, or an agent who works for one or the other. If two clients bought insurance from Herman Hartley, he would assign the policy to Great Northern Insurance company, which was a brokerage company. The two people might have different insurance providers depending the information on their application. Great Northern would handle his payments and claims, but the money would be provided by the provider company. It was a screwy arrangement designed to avoid liability. The broker had no liability, but the provider company had no official standing in the state. Neither was regulated by the insurance commissioner. As Hartley had said, there was no law against it. It was a scam but a legal one.

It was 4:45pm when a black man in work clothes and a hard hat stopped by the office. Roger was alone in the office so of course he asked, "Can I help you."

"No, I don't think so," He moved to Hillary's computer.

"Hold on there. I can't let you mess with Miss Bridge's computer," Roger said.

"You better back off white boy," the man said.

"Who you calling white boy?" Roger asked. He was trying to decide whether to laugh or toss his ass against the wall.

 
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