The Mourning Mail (final release candidate #7)

Chapter 44

After my flight landed back in San Diego, I spent the rest of the day catching up on forsaken odd chores and clearing my freelance work for the coming week. I was up bright and early the next day, a Thursday. At first, I struggled to get out of bed and thought I might have overtaxed myself the day before. But once I was active, I felt closer to normal—until my ribs or thigh spoke up to curb my enthusiasm.

My first task was to repay Marci for letting me in on the tipline call that led to the interview with Mark Christensen. I left a message on her office line, since this would be official business.

As I scanned my messages with my morning coffee, I saw I had a text from yet another unknown number. It read: "Fortune smiles on the brave. The OxyContin and cocaine they found were pure dumb luck. We had no information that the driver was dealing drugs on the side."

A link to another Union-Tribune online piece followed it, time-stamped yesterday afternoon:

"San Diego police reported new developments related to an alleged break-in yesterday in the predawn hours. Officers had previously responded to a reported burglary at Strike Response Security and Investigations' facilities downtown.

"The original complaint described the theft of nearly $400,000 in weapons and ammunition from the private investigation firm. Detectives are now calling the break-in a case of insurance fraud, labeling the heist 'staged.'

"A department spokesperson said officials would charge the company with filing a false police report. He confirmed that detectives had recovered all the guns and ammunition the company initially reported stolen. Sources say that officers found the weapons stored on company property. They had never left the direct supervision of company employees.

"An anonymous tip notified police of the fraud. The tipster provided the information in response to yesterday's news article in the Union-Tribune.

"Detectives searched a 2022 Dodge Charger owned by Strike Response and assigned by the company to one of its operatives. Police discovered ten missing firearms and ten thousand rounds of ammunition in the vehicle's trunk. Officers also found twenty-five hundred OxyContin pills and a half kilo of cocaine in the passenger compartment of that vehicle. The drugs have an estimated street value of approximately fifty thousand dollars. The department spokesperson confirmed the operative's arrest and that charges are pending.

"After obtaining a warrant, police performed a follow-up search of other Strike Response vehicles. That search revealed the other weapons and ammunition the company had reported missing.

"The company's legal woes mounted yesterday afternoon. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE) announced they would investigate. A BATFE source revealed that Strike Response had not registered several recovered weapons, and many had inaccurate or missing importation records. A spokesperson for BATFE stated that agents discovered illegal post-market automatic-firing modifications to those and other weapons. He emphasized that the investigation is ongoing, and additional charges may be pending.

"Strike Response staff declined to comment on any aspect of the investigations for this article. The company previously issued a one-line written statement that their legal staff hadn't had sufficient time to evaluate the allegations."

There was more text following the link to the news article. "We used a back channel to send SDPD our GPS tracking data for that Dodge. That data puts it right at the time and location down the street from where the truck driver struck the Uber, and witnesses saw the Dodge picking him up. Our sources say the Dodge driver is singing them an opera, dropping dimes on everyone. He's turning on anyone involved in the murder of the Uber driver and the cleanup after Julius Cantor's homicide. The driver claims Ainsworth did the neighbor. He's saying Strike Response handled the Pierce body dump at Seaver's request. However, the flipped witness claims the agency had no contact with the killers. And he says Strike Response operatives had nothing to do with the execution of Seaver's wife or moving her body.