Chapter 15: Setting the Trap

In conversations between myself, the college and the FBI we came to the conclusion it would be best to wait to the end of the semester before we put our plan in place. Agent Foster flew out to Minot in May just before we put our trap for Ginny B in place. When we met for the first time I immediately liked the guy. He went strictly by the rules but he was an OK guy. After we ended our meeting for the day he and I went out to supper that night. I knew he was on a per Diem based allotment for meals so I suggested a really good local steak house that had good cuts of beef at extremely inexpensive prices. After eating we sat around and chatted for a bit. He drank coffee while I had a local micro-brewed IPA. He and I came from similar middle class backgrounds. While I came from the Great Lakes region he came from the mid-east part of the country growing up on the Chesapeake Bay region of Maryland. I went to college and he went into the military and got his accounting degree while in the army and finished it up under the GI Bill. Agent Foster looked to me to be 10 yrs older. Ten years older and ten years wiser. Of course he had to bring up in our conversation my stupid asshat move of telling Ginny B that I was in love with her. According to him he never was that stupid. Like me he was single and according to him he was happy with that arrangement. Less headaches he claimed. I dropped him off at his motel close at 9 PM.

The next morning he drove around the town of Minot looking for a place where they could set up a trap to catch Ginny B in the act. Nothing suited him there were too many places were innocent people could get hurt. So it was back to the drawing board and rethink this. Before he caught his flight back to Chicago he stopped in to see me. Agent Foster explained the potential problems they faced here and there was no guarantee she would come here in the first place instead she wait for a more opportune time to make her attack.

I said. “Its too bad you can’t bust her at the airport when she arrives to do the deed.”

Agent Foster looked at me incredulously, “You are wasting your talents teaching, you need to become a special agent. You would be a natural.” With that he left and went to the airport for his flight back to Chicago.

I started reading up on federal laws pertaining to murder. One seemed to apply. Murder for Hire (18 U.S.C. Section 1958) If the killing can only be accomplished by causing a person to travel over state lines (including the victim), or by communicating the request by phone, mail, or the Internet, the murder-for-hire could be a federal crime. If it could be proven Ginny B called someone or had someone come across state lines to murder her parents, they had her.

I called Agent Foster all excited. He answered on the third ring. “Special Agent Foster, what crime are you reporting.?”

“Special Agent Foster, I have a way a case can be made against Ginny B but it is going to take some legwork on your part to get what is needed to charge her and then convict her.” I told him. “Look up 20 U. S. C. Section 1958. If she used the mail or phone to induce someone to go across state lines to commit the murder of her parents she is caught in the trap.”

“That’s stretching things a bit in order to make it work. Judge would throw that out of court in no time. Nice try though.” He responded.

I answered back. “No, no you don’t get it. Ginny doesn’t have a clue about LP gas, RVs and explosives. You have to get definite proof of how her parents died. If they were not strangled then they died of other means. That means she had help in doing the deed. A coroner’s report on the means of death should prove how they died. A fire marshal’s report on how the fire started should be able to prove someone tampered with the propane system that blew up and caused their deaths. And lastly a combo of phone records, motel records could prove the rest of the case I would think. Credit card slips, phone reservations, gas credit card information etc. Get that all together and you got her. And if you want I can calculate the probability of something occurring with a sampling error of less then 2%. I can mathematically prove the probability of how accurate the evidence is. Numbers don’t lie.”

Agent Foster chuckled, “You math guys think you are so smart.”

I simply responded. “Yep.” And then hung up.

Later that week my phone rang and when I answered it, it was Agent Foster. “OK I got the autopsy report on Ginny B’s parents here in front of me. They died rather gruesomely. The died of smoke inhalation and third degree burns of the trachea. Those poor people died from breathing in the flames.” Agent Foster said. “What a crappy way to have died. Their last moments had to have been pure hell. I want this case bad now. No need to further convince me. Also the propane line regulators were definitely tampered with according to the Fire Marshall’s report.”

“You have met the first two sets in the equation,” I said. “Now we have to prove the last two sets of the equation and cancel them out and we the equation solved. Find who her fire guy was and make the connection she contacted him by mail or the phone. And you will get your conviction.”

“OK, Mr Math guy when this is all over I am personally going to march you to Quantico at gun point.” Agent Foster remarked. “You make solving cases so easy.”

It was now the second week of June. The school’s spring semester had been over for almost three weeks and the beginning of next week the summer sessions would be starting up. I had not heard anything from my FBI contact now for several weeks and I was growing concerned. I truly wondered how the case was progressing. I know it would take time to track down all the leads they had but I still wanted results.

I was sitting in my office reading a technical magazine for computer enthusiasts and an article caught my interest. A couple of electronics nerds from the San Francisco bay area had developed a technology that could imitate and fool just about any telephone switching system out there. According to their claims you could be in Cleveland and call a number and the receiving switching equipment would record the connection as being from San Diego or where ever you chose. My initial thought was that it was a nice toy, expensive, but still an electronic toy. On further contemplation, a light bulb went off in my head. If that is so, I could be here in Minot safe as a bug in a rug and the equipment could say I was in Chicago or Seattle or where ever. Hmmm ... Tine to call my friendly neighborhood FBI agent.